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GreekKeys Fonts

NEW ATHENA UNICODE

New Athena Unicode is the most extensive font, since it contains all the characters of the other three fonts plus additional more specialized items from Unicode 7.0 (and a few in the pipeline, that is, in the process of approval that follows acceptance by the Unicode Technical Committee). In addition to Greek, the font has many Roman characters with diacritics, the Coptic block (U+2C80 etc.), the Ancient Greek Numbers block (U+10140 etc.), the Old Italic block (U+10300 etc.), and Ancient Greek Musical Notation block (U+1D200 etc.). [For Mycenean Linear B, not present in New Athena Unicode, the free font Aegean is recommended; it can be found on the internet.] You can see all the glyphs present in the font by using the glyph inventory view in Font Book. For more information about the characters included and how to find and enter them, see the document FindCharacterNAU.pdf present in the folder GK2015 Font Files. This document contains lists of PUA characters and explains how to use the cmap listing (NAU5cmap.txt), which includes all the glyphs that have Unicode code points; it also lists the glyphs that lack code points and are thus not in the cmap listing.

New Athena Unicode is an expansion of the APA GreekKeys non-Unicode font Athenian. Athenian was designed by Jeffrey Rusten, based on various Greek upright fonts illustrated in Victor Scholderer, Greek Printing Types 1465-1927 (London 1927): that of Nicolaus Jenson (1472, plate 7), the Complutum Greek Testament (ca. 1510), Robert Proctor’s “Otter” (1910, plate 59) and Victor Scholderer’s “New Hellenic” (1927, plate 58). Rusten produced Athena Unicode as a first experiment with Unicode fonts, and Ralph Hancock made additions and corrections. In 2002 Donald Mastronarde began expansion and enhancements of the font, renaming it New Athena Unicode. The revision history is detailed in the document AboutNAUfont_v5_02.pdf that accompanies the font.

Sample:

New Athena Unicode is made available for free to anyone under an Open Font License. A woff version is also available for webside developers.

GreekKeys 2015 in the standard Mac installation installs four styles (regular, italic, bold, bold italic) for maximum compatibility with advanced programs. For some users, the regular version alone may be sufficient, if all their applications will still create italic and bold versions on the fly from the regular version. With manual installation on Windows, or optionally on Mac, the user can install all for styles or just the regular style.

From time to time an updated version of New Athena Unicode may be posted at this help site. Users may wish to check there to see if they have the latest version.

NON-FREEWARE GREEKKEYS 2015 FONTS

The three remaining SCS GreekKeys fonts are licensed to purchasers of GreekKeys 2015. The correction history of these fonts is contained in the document SCSFontsRevisionHistory.pdf found in the same folder as the font files.

Although these fonts do not have as many characters available as New Athena Unicode, they do have for polytonic Greek the same precomposed glyphs for combinations of macron or breve with other diacritics and for dotted Greek characters (including those with normal diacritics) and for lowercase Greek letters with overstroke found in New Athena Unicode, and the same OpenType ccmp tables to enable substitutions. Basic metrical symbols are also in these fonts.

AttikaU font is an expansion of the APA GreekKeys non-Unicode font Attika. Attika was designed by George B. Walsh in 1986, in tribute to the font “Attika” designed in 1953 by the renowned typographer Hermann Zapf. The Unicode version, with many added glyphs, was produced by Donald Mastronarde.

Sample:

KadmosU font is an expansion of the non-Unicode GreekKeys-encoded font Kadmos designed by Marc Cogan of Allotype Typographics, who donated the font to the APA in 2004. The Unicode version, with many added glyphs, was produced by Donald Mastronarde.

Sample:

BosporosU font is an expansion of the non-Unicode GreekKeys-encoded font Bosporos designed by Marc Cogan of Allotype Typographics, who donated the font to the APA in 2004. The Unicode version, with many added glyphs, was produced by Donald Mastronarde.

Sample:

VERTICAL SPACING OF GREEKKEYS FONTS

For legibility of the accents, the SCS GreekKeys fonts have characters that extend vertically up and down farther than most fonts. In some cases, tops or bottoms of characters may appear cut off on the computer screen, although they will print completely. If this happens, you may want to adjust the paragraph formatting entry for line spacing. In Microsoft Word, for instance, instead of using the setting “single” use the setting “at least” and make the line high 2 or 3 points greater than the font size you are using. That is, if you are typing in 12-point BosporosU, set the line spacing to at least 14 or 15 points; or if you are typing in 14-point KadmosU, set the line spacing to at least 16 or 17 points.

For information about the smart font features of the SCS fonts and about the precomposed characters and Private Use Area characters, please consult GK2015UserGuide.pdf, sections 22D-F.

Other Polytonic Greek Fonts (for use with GreekKeys keyboards)

If you are using only the standard characters in the Unicode blocks for Greek and Greek Extended, then there are probably several fonts on you system that contain these and can be used for polytonic Greek. (The indication that a font cannot be used for polytonic Greek is that any vowel with a diacritic other than the plain acute accent will be displayed as a square rather than a character.) OS versions are inconsistent, but some fonts that always or usually have polytonic Greek characters are Times New Roman, Times, Palatino or Palatino Linotype, Arial Unicode, Tahoma, Lucida Grande.

Other free fonts are Cardo, Gentium, typefaces from the Greek Font Society, including GFS Didot Classics and GFS Porson, and IFAO Grec. See also the listing of fonts at http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/fonts.php.

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