I’ve just been made aware of an excellent Greek unicode font that is the most thorough I have ever come across. Designed for the papyrologist and text-critical scholar in mind. The font is called IFAO-Grec and can be downloaded at the bottom of this page. You will see also a documentation page, which lists all of the extra characters available.
IFAO = French Institute of Eastern Archaeology
From the documentation:
It is first of all a Greek and Coptic font which contains the most important critical and diacritical signs, and the sigla and symbols used in editing papyrological and epigraphical texts, as well as Greek texts of specialized content such as mathematics, astronomy, magic, music, and poetry.
The font is naturally compatible with other Greek fonts in standard Unicode format (Main Plane 0) and tries to be as compatible as possible with e.g. wAthenaUnicode in the Private Use Area (PUA) and the new Plane 1 area. But it offers several possibilities that do not exist in other fonts. The font is designed to harmonise with Times New Roman, in both style and dimensions.
It was conceived by Jean-Luc Fournet, and the Unicode version is the work of Ralph Hancock. Adam Bülow-Jacobsen helped in various ways.
IFAO-Grec Unicode is issued free of all rights.
Here are direct links:
The font:
http://www.ifao.egnet.net/uploads/polices/IFAO-Grec11e.zip (The font file name when unzipped is IFAOGrec.ttf. It appears in font meus as “IFAO-Grec Unicode.”)
Glyph table:
http://www.ifao.egnet.net/uploads/polices/IFAOGrecUnicodeTable.pdf
English documentation
http://www.ifao.egnet.net/uploads/polices/IFAOGrec_unicode_en.pdf
Here’s a graphic that shows the basic character set. (I left it large so you can see the detail; it will either be compressed horizontally or run off the screen to the right, so you’ll have to save it locally or right click it and View Image to see it undistorted or to see the entire image.)
There is a full set of NA text crit symbols, but they won’t display in MS Word 2008/Mac. I haven’t tried in the Windows version of Word or other word processors yet.
Thanks for this, but the link is broken. I would be happy to test it out in Linux and Microsoft.
Also: is the only advantage of this font over SIL’s Gentium series (which I have reviewed: http://nerdlets.org/2008/07/12/the-best-greek-fonts/) the addition of text critical symbols?
The links *are* valid and working (I just verified them), including the “this” link in the paragraph I quoted from Danny.
The benefits compared with Gentium are the vast character set. As for aesthetic considerations, yes, I much prefer the glyphs in Gentium.
Your review linked looks interesting; I’ll read it later today. Thanks.
Hmmm. When I click on links listed under “direct links” I get a 404 error from the remote site. The “this” link in the paragraph from Danny does work, however, and I’ll just use that.
Thanks again.
One more question? Is the font licensed under an open license? What are the usage terms?
The only statements I can find re. licensing issues is that “IFAO-Grec Unicode is issued free of all rights” and: “Elle est gratuite et libre de droits” (~ “It is free and free of copyright”). There does not appear to be any reference to any of the “Open” licenses.
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