Windows Unicode Diacritic Fonts

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Windows Unicode Diacritic Fonts

Contributor(s): Than Grove

The following is a list of Windows Unicode fonts that contain some or all of the necessary characters for Indo-Tibetan computing. This list attempts to cover the known available fonts on both the Windows and Mac operating systems. However, users with further information on available fonts or other platforms such as Linux are encouraged to contact the THL at thdltools@virginia.edu. Each font is listed by name, with its availability, quality, and a description of the characters it covers. At present, the ratings are provisional. (View list of Macintosh Unicode Diacritic Fonts.)

Andika SIL

  • Availability: Available from SIL under their OpenFont License.
  • Quality of appearance: Good for both screen and printing.
  • Diacritic coverage: All — Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, Latin Extended-C and Latin Extended Additional.
  • Rating: Not Yet Rated

Arial Unicode MS

  • Availability: Shipped with Windows XP and Microsoft Publisher 2002.
    • external link: About
    • No Download Available
  • Quality of appearance: Good for both screen and printing.
  • Diacritic coverage: All — Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B and Latin Extended Additional.
  • Other script coverage: IPA Extensions, Combining diacritic marks, CJK and many other non-Latin scripts.
  • Rating: Very Good.

Charis SIL

  • Availability: Available from SIL under their OpenFont License.
  • Quality of appearance: Good for both screen and printing.
  • Diacritic coverage: All — Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, Latin Extended-C and Latin Extended Additional.
  • Rating: Not Yet Rated

Code 2000

  • Availability: external link: Download from orwell.ru
  • Quality of appearance: Screen appearance is mediocre. Printed appearance fair.
  • Diacritic coverage: All — Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, and Latin Extended Additional.
  • Other script coverage: IPA Extensions, Combining diacritic marks, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, Devanagari and other Indic fonts, CJK.
  • Rating: Average.

Courier Extended

  • Availability: Available from the fonts page of the Bahá'i Computer & Communication Association.
  • Quality of appearance: Screen appearance fair and printed appearance fair.
  • Diacritic coverage: All — Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B and Latin Extended Additional.
  • Other script coverage: Undetermined.
  • Rating: Very good.

Courier Ind Uni

  • Availability: Available from the external link: IndUni Site.
  • Quality of appearance: Screen appearance poor and printed appearance good. Lack of hinting makes web pages in this font difficult to read.
  • Diacritic coverage: Contains all necessary diacritics for Indo-Tibetan studies.
  • Other script coverage: None.
  • Rating: Average.

Doulos SIL

  • Availability: Available from SIL under their OpenFont License.
  • Quality of appearance: Good for both screen and printing.
  • Diacritic coverage: All — Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, Latin Extended-C and Latin Extended Additional.
  • Rating: Not Yet Rated

Enigmatic Unicode

  • Availability: Free download from fonts4u or from the original designer site (Objets Dart).
  • Diacritic coverage: Contains most of the necessary diacritics for Indo-Tibetan studies.
  • Other script coverage: Cyrillic, Greek, Latin, IPA, Combining Diacritical Marks.

Gandhari Unicode

  • Availability: Freely available from the British Library/University of Washington's Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project. See the "Font's & Keyboard" section of their download page, and choose GU.zip. Fonts come with a MS Word template that provides shortcuts to input diacritic characters.
  • Quality of appearance: Screen appearance is somewhat irregular on smaller sizes; printing quality is excellent.
  • Diacritic coverage: All — Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, some of Latin Extended-B, and Latin Extended Additional. (Does not have S or s-cedilla.)
  • Other script coverage: IPA Extensions, Combining diacritic marks, Modern Greek, some further diacritic combination in the Unicode Private Use Area.
  • Rating: Very Good.

Gentium

  • Availability: Freely available from from SIL.
  • Quality of appearance: Excellent.
  • Diacritic coverage: All — Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, and Latin Extended Additional.
  • Other script coverage: IPA Extensions, Combining Diacritical Marks, Greek, and Cyrillic.
  • Rating: Excellent.

Gentium Plus SIL

  • Availability: Available from SIL under their OpenFont License.
  • Quality of appearance: Good for both screen and printing.
  • Diacritic coverage: All — Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, Latin Extended-C and Latin Extended Additional.
  • Rating: Not Yet Rated

Helvetica Ind Uni

  • Availability: Available from the external link: IndUni Site.
  • Quality of appearance: Screen appearance poor and printed appearance good. Lack of hinting makes web pages in this font difficult to read.
  • Diacritic coverage: Contains all necessary diacritics for Indo-Tibetan studies.
  • Other script coverage: None.
  • Rating: Average.

Hindsight Unicode

  • Availability: Free download from fonts4u or from the original designer site (Objets Dart).
  • Diacritic coverage: Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, Latin Extended Additional.
  • Other script coverage: IPA Extensions, Phonetic Extensions, Combining Diacritical Marks, Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian, Hebrew, Cherokee.

JGaramond

  • Availability: Available from the JGaramond site.
  • Quality of appearance: Screen appearance good and printed appearance good.
  • Diacritic coverage: Contains all necessary diacritics for Indo-Tibetan studies.
  • Other script coverage: None.
  • Rating: Good.

Lucida Grande

  • Availability: Bundled with external link: Safari download from Apple
  • Quality of appearance: screen appearance and printed appearance good
  • Diacritic coverage: Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, and Latin Extended Additional.
  • Other script coverage: Combining Diacritical Marks, Greek, and Cyrillic.
  • Rating: Not yet reviewed.

Minion Pro

  • Availability: Available to buy from the Adobe TypeKit site.
  • Quality of appearance: Professional
  • Diacritic coverage: Contains most of the necessary diacritics for Indo-Tibetan studies.
  • Other script coverage: Cyrillic, Greek, Latin.
  • Rating: Not yet rated.

NCS Ind Uni Roman

  • Availability: Available from the external link: IndUni Site.
  • Quality of appearance: Screen appearance poor and printed appearance good. Lack of hinting makes web pages in this font difficult to read.
  • Diacritic coverage: Contains all necessary diacritics for Indo-Tibetan studies.
  • Other script coverage: None.
  • Rating: Average.

Palatino Ind Uni Roman

  • Availability: Available from the external link: IndUni Site.
  • Quality of appearance: Screen appearance poor and printed appearance good. Lack of hinting makes web pages in this font difficult to read.
  • Diacritic coverage: Contains all necessary diacritics for Indo-Tibetan studies.
  • Other script coverage: None.
  • Rating: Average.

Palatino Linotype

  • Availability: Shipped with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Also available from University of Houston and the Bible Research website.
  • Quality of appearance: Screen appearance excellent and printed appearance excellent.
  • Diacritic coverage: Most of the necessary diacritics for Indo-Tibetan studies. Though Alan Wood's page says it covers Latin Extended Additional, it does not appear to have the dot-below and dot-above characters.
  • Other script coverage: Cyrillic, Greek, Latin..
  • Rating: Below Average due to lack of essential diacritics.

SImPL

  • Availability: Free download from Phil Chastney's An APL Unicode Font.
  • Quality of appearance: Screen appearance is fair. Printed appearance fair.
  • Diacritic coverage: All — Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, and most of Latin Extended Additional (missing l/L macron with dot-below, m/M dot-above, and z/Z dot-below).
  • Other script coverage: Greek, Cyrillic.
  • Rating: Average.

Tahoma

  • Availability: Shipped with all Windows systems. Updated in 2004.
  • Type: San Serif
  • Quality of appearance: Screen and printed appearance both good.
  • Diacritic coverage: Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended Additional.
  • Other script coverage: Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, Thai.
  • Rating: Very Good.

Note: Prior to the 2004 edition, Tahoma did not include the dot-below diacritics.

Thryomanes

  • Availability: Freely available from The Language Page.
  • Quality of appearance: Screen and printed appearance both good.
  • Diacritic coverage: All — Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, and Latin Extended Additional.
  • Other script coverage: IPA Extensions, Combining diacritic marks, Greek, Cyrillic.
  • Rating: Very Good.

Times Extended Roman

  • Availability: Available from the fonts page of the external link: Bahá'i Computer & Communication Association.
  • Quality of appearance: Screen appearance fair and printed appearance good.
  • Diacritic coverage: All — Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B and Latin Extended Additional.
  • Other script coverage: Undetermined.
  • Rating: Excellent. Recommended.

Times Ind Uni

  • Availability: Available from the external link: IndUni Site.
  • Quality of appearance: Screen appearance poor and printed appearance good. Lack of hinting makes web pages in this font difficult to read.
  • Diacritic coverage: Contains all necessary diacritics for Indo-Tibetan studies.
  • Other script coverage: None.
  • Rating: Average.

Titus Cyberbit

  • Availability: Available for free download from TITUS (Thesaurus Indogermanischer Text und Sprachmaterialien)
  • Quality of appearance: Screen appearance is irregular because of varying thickness. Printing appearance is very good.
  • Diacritic coverage: All — Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, and Latin Extended Additional.
  • Other script coverage: IPA Extensions, Combining diacritic marks, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, most CJK and a few other non-Latin scripts. A large number of various diacritic combinations with both capital and lowercase letters is found in the Unicode Private Use Area.
  • Rating: Good.

URW Palladio HOT

  • Availability: This Hybrid OpenType (HOT) font from Ulrich Stiehl's Transliteration and Devanagari Fonts for Sanskrit replaces URW Palladio UNI font. URW Palladio Hot is not presently available for download, but is being tested by friends of the developer. Eventually, it will be made available in 3 different versions:
    • Hinted OpenType font in TTF format (TrueType hints).
    • Hinted OpenType font in OTF format (PostScript hints).
    • Unhinted, very compact OpenType font in TTF format.
  • Quality of appearance: Not yet reviewed.
  • Diacritic coverage: All — Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, and Latin Extended Additional. Based on the ISO 15919 Transliteration of Devanagari and related Indic scripts into Latin characters specifications.
  • Other script coverage: Not yet evaluated.
  • Rating: Not yet reviewed.

VU Times

  • Availability: Download from Unicode Fonts for Romanized Viet-Pali-Sanskrit.
  • Quality of appearance: Screen appearance is good except some of the dot-above and dot-below characters are not well hinted or scalled.
  • Diacritic coverage: All — Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, and Latin Extended Additional.
  • Other script coverage: Some Arabic and Hebrew.
  • Rating: Good.

Other Diacritic Windows Fonts

The following fonts have been suggested by users but have not yet been reviewed:

  • CPF Serif Pro
  • Enigmatic Unicode
  • Hindsight Unicode
  • Lucida Sans Unicode
  • Myriad Pro
  • Torquemada Starved Unicode
  • Ubuntu (Font Family. It is not confused with the computer name.)

Provided for unrestricted use by the external link: Tibetan and Himalayan Library