Pāli Font Resources

Updated 19 June 2009

Unicode Fonts

Unicode is an international font encoding standard for most of the world’s languages. Some Unicode fonts are included with Windows ME and later versions of Windows. Windows CE, NT, XP, 2000, and Mac OS 9.2 support the Unicode standard more fully. Unicode version 3.1 supports all of the characters required for Pāli and Sanskrit. Download the PDF to learn how to use Unicode Pāli Fonts (100 Kbytes)

I have decided to move completely to Unicode for Pāli. The ANSI character set fonts are long out of date, and only encourage the production of documents that cannot be read by others without time-consuming conversion, or by installing out-of-date fonts, thus perpetuating the use of non-standard character mappings.

Most of my fonts now include OpenType features such as ligatures

Updated 21st April 2006

Includes instructions on customising Open Office to type Pāli or other extended Unicode characters.

My Unicode fonts were edited with Font Creator 5.6, the latest version of this powerful Truetype font editor. The professional edition automates much of the process of adding composite characters to fonts, though hinting is not yet supported. The online manual gives details of what it can do, or read my review of the latest changes.

Font collectors may find MainType useful — a Font Manager from High-Logic for viewing, organising, and managing fonts.

Fix Font Folder (fifofo.exe) is a free utility from High-Logic. Recommended to fix problems with the Windows Font Registry.

Preview the characters
and symbols in my fonts.

All font downloads are 7-zip archives

Downloads

»» Babel Map A free Unicode Character Map with a search function.

Font Properties Extension is a handy utility for Windows users. It displays details of fonts from the Windows Explorer right-click menu. Works on Windows 95 or later. 477 Kbytes. Easy to install and use.

My fonts are always evolving. Please do not host them or pass them on, but link to this page for the latest versions, new fonts, and information.

Gentium Unicode font by Victor Gaultney (Gentium Website)

This font has all of the characters needed for Romanised Pali and Classical Sanskrit. Follow the link to learn more about it. Click on the graphic to download it. The archive contains four TTF font files and documentation. Two similar fonts, both with Regular and Italic type styles 225 K). Updated 24/11/2005

Akkhara is a derivative of Gentium. I have added low profile accents and reduced the line-spacing while preventing the clipping of high accents. Maths symbols are the same width as figures. The additional arrows, symbols, and dingbats are designed to match the Caps height.

13/6/2006 (ver 1.0) • Regular & Italic, 2,243 Glyphs

Cankama is a Gothic, Black Letter script. Typeface Sample.

17/4/2009 (ver 1.1) • Regular, 1,912 Glyphs, Petite Caps, Standard and Discretional Ligatures, Old Style Figures,
Fractions, Stacking Fractions, Scientific Inferiors, and Superscripts.

Carita is a Small Caps font with matching glyphs for Basic Greek.

17/1/2009 (ver 2.1) • Regular & Bold, 1,621 Glyphs

Garava was designed for body text. It has a generous x-height and economical copyfit. The family includes Small Caps, Bold Small Caps, and Heavy typestyles besides the usual four. Typeface Sample

30/4/2009 (ver 2.4) • 7 styles, 2,226  Glyphs, Petite Caps, Ligatures, Oldstyle Figures, Stacking Fractions, Scientific Inferiors, and Superscripts

Guru has been updated with OpenType features.  Typeface Sample

17/1/2009 (ver 2.4) • 4 typestyles, 2364 Glyphs, Petite Caps, Standard and Discretionary Ligatures, Oldstyle Figures, Stacking Fractions, Fractions, Scientific Inferiors, and Superscripts

Hattha means “Hand.” This is a hand-writing font with regular, italic, and bold versions. Drawn with a felt-tip, and smoothed in FontCreator.

17/1/2009 (ver 1.2) • 3 typestyles, 1725 Glyphs

Kabala is a distinctive Sans Serif typeface designed for display text or headings. Typeface Sample.

4/5/2009 (ver 2.3) • 4 typestyles, 2082 Glyphs, Petite Caps, Standard and Discretionary Ligatures, Fractions, Stacking Fractions, OldStyle Figures, Scientific Inferiors, and Superscripts

Lekhana is my version of Zapf Chancery. A flowing script that can be used for correspondence or body text. ‘Lekhana’ means “writing.”  Typeface Sample

17/1/2009 (ver 1.3) • 4 typestyles, 1770 Glyphs, Ligatures, Oldstyle Figures, Stacking  Fractions,  Scientific Inferiors, and Superscripts

Mandala is designed for display text or headings. “Mandala” is a Pali workd meaning “circle.”  Typeface Sample

17/1/2009 (ver 1.1) • 4 typestyles, 1637 Glyphs

Pali is my version of Hermann Zapf’s Palatino. Typeface Sample.

18/5/2009 (ver 1.50) • 4 typestyles, 2,282 Glyphs, Titling Capitals, Petite Caps, Standard and Discretionary Ligatures, Stacking Fractions, Fractions, Oldstyle Figures, Scientific Inferiors, and Superscripts

Odana is a calligraphic brush font suitable for headlines, titles, or short texts where a less formal appearance is wanted.

12/1/2009 (ver 2.1) • Regular typestyle, 1,850 Glyphs, Petite Caps, Ligatures, Stacking  Fractions, Scientific Inferiors, and Superscripts

Talapanna is my version of Goudy Bertham, with decorative gothic capitals and extra ligatures in the Private Use Area.

17/1/2009 (ver 2.2) • Regular and Bold typestyles, 1773 Glyphs,
Initial Capitals, Standard and Discretionary Ligatures,
Scientific Inferiors, and Superscripts

Talapatta is the same as Talapanna, but with different decorative gothic capitals in the Private Use Area.

17/1/2009 (ver 2.2) • Regular and Bold typestyles, 1773 Glyphs,
Initial Capitals, Standard and Discretionary Ligatures,
Scientific Inferiors, and Superscripts

Veluvana means “Bamboo Grove.” The Greek glyphs are from Guru

17/1/2009 (ver 2.2) • Regular typestyle, 1,973 Glyphs, Petite Caps, Ligatures, Oldstyle Figures, Scientific Inferiors, and Superscripts

Verajja is a Pali word meaning “a variety of kingdoms or provinces.” It is derived from Bitstream Vera, a font released under a generous license agreement. See the Gnome Project for details.

17/1/2009 (ver 3.1) • 4 typestyles 1,905 Glyphs

Typeface Sample

17/1/2009 (ver 1.1) • 4 typestyles 2,004 Glyphs

Verajja This cut-down version of Verajja is the same font, but without the symbols. Includes Greek and Latin Extended Character sets.

18/8/2006 (ver 2.70) • 4 typestyles, 905 Glyphs

Font archives compressed using 7-Zip’s LZMA format are typically about half the size of archives produced using standard ZIP format.

To save bandwidth, time, and server space, many of my downloads now use this format.

If you need the TTF files in Zip format send me an Email:

Progress Report
Updated 19 June 2009

Pali has been updated with superscripts for a-z, a full set of stacking fractions up to 63/64, more ligatures, and new OpenType features for Titling Capitals, fractions, and discretionary ligatures. Stacking fractions allow for much better typesetting of fractional measurements, which is further improved with the use of kerning pairs (the third line). OpenType aware applications will insert them automatically if the Alternative Fractions feature is enabled and the user types 19/64, 3/16 etc. Autocorrect can be used in other applications.

My fonts use the Private Use area for these extra glyphs. If you use OpenOffice, my Add and Remove Ligatures Macros can be used to add/remove ligatures, and it could modified to convert regular text to Petite Capitals or Titling Capitals. Titling Capitals are lighter than regular capitals, and more generously spaced.

The Miscellaneous Symbols character set has been updated to support the full range of glyphs added in version 5.1 of the Unicode Standard. Version 1.50 includes many more kerning pairs (now about 1,600), including pairs for Greek, Stacking Fractions, Titling Capitals, and Small Capitals. The uppercase equivalent of lowercase German sharp ß has been added, following the update to Unicode standard 5.1.

Updated Kabala with italic and bold italic typestyles, a few more glyphs, and additional OpenType Feature for fractions, stacking fractions, and Greek Petite Capitals.

Garava The updated fonts have OpenType features for Ligatures, Petite Caps, OldStyle Figures, Superscripts, Scientific Inferiors, Fractions and Stacking Fractions.  The Heavy Typestyle now has additional glyphs for Petite Capitals and Stacking Fractions. Miscellaneous Symbols have been updated to Unicode Standard 5.1

The Small Capitals in separate type styles replace the lowercase and are 80% of the Capital Height. These now have small figures in place of Old Style figures in the Private Use Area for use with lowercase. Use regular figures for uppercase.

Petite Capitals are in the Private Use Area and use OpenType substitutions. OldStyle Figures and Petite Capitals match the x-Height of the font. Applications like OpenOffice or Serif™ PagePlus that don’t support OpenType features can still access these extra glyphs, which are mapped to the Private Use Area.

Ligatures with alternate forms: ck, ct, sp, st, tz, Qu, and Th are now discretionary ligatures.

Cankama is the first font to have an OpenType feature for fractions. If this feature is enabled, when the user types 1/2 it is replaced with ½, 1/4 is replaced with ¼, etc. Only standard fractions included in Unicode are currently supported. Stacking, a.k.a. Nut Fractions may also be used. Updated ver 1.1 on 17/4/2009 with improved spacing, and better design for some glyphs.

Guru, my version of Garamond, has been updated to version 2.3 to correct an error in the OpenType script tags. All other OpenType fonts have been updated for the same reason.

Lekhana is my version of Zapf’s Chancery typeface. It has several distinctive features that set it apart — italic and bold italic typestyles, as well as regular and bold, several ligatures, and the usual wide range of glyphs supporting Basic Greek, and Latin Extended character sets. This is my first font with OpenType features for using Ligatures, Nut Fractions, OldStyle Figures, Scientific Inferiors, and Superscripts in applications that support them. These additional glyphs can be inserted from the Private Use Area in applications (like Serif™ PagePlus 10 or later) that support Unicode, but not OpenType features. Version 1.1 corrects some mapping errors and adds Nut Fractions.

Updated Talapanna and Talapanna with OpenType Features for Initial Capitals (Gothic Drop Capitals) , Standard ligatures (ff fi fl etc.), and Discretionary Ligatures (AV LA Qu Th ck sp etc.), superscripts and subscripts.

Updated Odana with Petite Capitals, more Ligatures, Nut Fractions, and OpenType features. The figures are designed to fit with lowercase so there was no need to add OldStyle Figures.

Veluvana is an attractive brush calligraphic font which has been updated to version 2.0 with some OpenType features. Basic Greek glyphs are from my earlier font, Guru. Designing matching Greek glyphs would take me too long.

Updated Verajja to version 3.0. Added schwa, three more curency symobls, Extended Latin petite capitals, Greek Petite Capitals, improved Double-struck capitals, and more and improved ligatures.

Mandala is a Pāli word meaning “Circle.” This geometric Sans-serif font is ideal for display text and headings. There are now four type styles — regular, italic, bold, and bold italic. There is no character set for Greek apart from the pi and mu symbols. A wide range of Latin Extended characters is included to support most European languages and Vietnamese. Arrows, maths symbols, general punctuation, miscellaneous symbols, and dingbats are included.

Tālapanna is a Pāli word meaning "Palm Leaf." It is based on Goudy Bertham, a Public Domain font. It includes a set of Gothic capitals such as those used in illuminated manuscripts. Sample text using the Gothic capitals instead of regular capitals.

A wide range of Latin characters means it can be used for Pali, Sanskrit, nearly all European languages, and Vietnamese. A basic Greek character set, and a wide range of symbols extend its usefulness to other academic fields such as maths and science. Most maths and currency symbols are designed on the figure width, while other symbols, arrows, and geometric shapes are a uniform width and align with the Caps height wherever the design permits.

Hattha started life as my handwriting drawn with a felt-tip marker. That was scanned into FontCreator, then the outlines smoothed with the built-in drawing tools. The Bold was then made with the help of the Glyph Transforming Wizard. Accented characters were added with Complete Composites. Arrows, Symbols, and Dingbats were copied from my other fonts, and resized to match. I have now added an italic typestyle with several redesigned glyphs. Bold Italic may not follow for a while as it is a lot of work and not so much used.

Verajja Serif includes a full set of Greek Extended Glyphs from the Deja-Vu Open Source font. As with Verajja (Sans), I have used low profile accents and adjusted the default leading to 130% of the font size. Other improvements include maths symbols set to digit width, true superscript/subscripts, and Small Caps in the Private Use area.

Updated Carita to version 1.60. Added about fifty glyphs, completing the arrows and roman numerals, added a few maths symbols, corrected some errors, and improved a few glyphs.

Created Pāli Keyboard layouts with Microsoft’s Keyboard Layout Creator for typing Latin Extended characters in applications that don’t support keyboard customisation. Tested in Wordpad, Serif Page Plus, and Open Office. Still under development. Please try them out and offer some feedback on my Opera Forum.

Disclaimer: Always backup important data and make a restore point before installing new software. No liability can be accepted for using this software, which is provided in good faith.

Added Typographical spaces to all fonts except VerajjaPDA. These include em-space (2048 funits), en-space (1024), 1/3 em space (683), 1/4 em space (512), 1/6 em space (341), figure space, punctuation space, thin space (410), hair space (128 funits), and zero width space.

Added a cut-down venison of Verajja as a ZIP archive for PDA users. It contains all of the same Greek and Latin Extended Glyphs as Verajja, but no Arrows, Geometric Symbols, Miscellaneous Symbols, Small Caps, Ligatures, or Maths Symbols. The fonts take 374K on disk instead of 1.13 Mbytes.

If your language is not fully supported, or some characters are wrongly designed, please let me know. Send me a small illustration of what you think is needed.

About Ligatures

I have updated my fonts with improved ligatures. To add these to your documents, try my Open Office macros, which will add or remove ligatures using search and replace. Not all fonts benefit from using ligatures. If you use them, spell-check will not recognise words containing them, and if you later switch to a font that doesn’t contain the same ligatures, you may see the notdef glyph (ff) instead. However, they are used by professional typesetters so I include them in my fonts.

FAQ

1. Are these fonts copyright? Yes. Although they are free, they are subject to copyright under the GNU License. You may modify the fonts, include glyphs in your own fonts, and even sell your modified versions, but if you do they must also be released under the same GNU License terms. Modified versions must be renamed.

2. Can I host your fonts on my web site? No. Please do not redistribute my fonts, but post a link to this page to ensure that everyone can get the latest versions and other new fonts. I regularly update and improve my fonts, and I wish to ensure that users always have the latest versions.

3. How can I use the OpenType features? If you have a program with OpenType support you can access the OpenType features. This page now uses OpenType features. If you use Firefox 3 you can see the ligatures.

4. Can I use OpenType features in OpenOffice? Not yet. However, you can insert any of the special glyphs from the Insert Symbol menu or use a macro to search and replace very quickly.

5 How Did You Add the OpenType Features? I used a program called OpenType Compiler. See this Tutorial on the High-Logic Forum for details.

6. How Do I install OpenType Fonts? The same way as you install TrueType fonts. Open the Windows Fonts folder and select “Install New Font...” from the file menu. Browse to where the fonts are saved and select them. You can also use a Font Manager such as MainType.

7. How do I open the 7-Zip Archives? Download the 7-Zip archive program from Source Forge. IZArc will also open 7-Zip archives.

8. Why do you use 7-Zip Format? Because TrueType fonts compress much better with the LZMA format used by 7-Zip than with standard Zip format. Archives are about half the size, which means less server space, less bandwidth usage, and faster download times for users. 7-Zip is free and small.

9. How long does it take to make a font? That depends on how well you want to do it. Anything between a few minutes and a few months. Please see the story of The Chariot Maker.

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