The
ALPHABETUM
Unicode
font
is
the
result
of
a
personal
interest
dating
back
many
years
in the problems faced by classicists who need special characters to
type ancient languages. This font tries to solve, at least in some
extent, this problem.
COVERAGE
OF THIS FONT
ALPHABETUM is
a large font (7,877 characters in version 15.00) and it has been
specifically designed to type classical and medieval LATIN
(including long and short vowels, epigraphical signs, coin symbols,
Mediaeval abbreviations and metrical symbols, among others), GREEK
(including vowels with macron and breve, metrical signs and many other
characters missing in most fonts), OLD ITALIC, (Etruscan,
Oscan, Umbrian, Picene, Faliscan, Messapic etc), IBERIAN,
CELTIBERIAN, OLD NORSE, KHAROSTHI, INSCRIPTIONAL PARTHIAN,
MEROITIC, OLD PERMIC
,
OGHAM, OLD PERSIAN cuneiform, GLAGOLITIC, OLD CYRILLIC, COPTIC,
PHAISTOS DISC, BYZANTINE
MUSICAL
SYMBOLS,
BRAHMI, AVESTAN, IMPERIAL ARAMAIC, OLD TURKIC, ELYMAIC,
LINEAR B,
PHOENICIAN, ANATOLIAN
SCRIPTS, INSCRIPTIONAL PAHLAVI, OLD HUNGARIAN (rovásírás), CYPRIOT, Ancient
Greek musical notation, Ancient Greek acrophonic numerals, New Testament editorial symbols, Ancient Greek
papyrological numbers, Aegean numbers and OLD &
MIDDLE ENGLISH, but this font includes support for most of the
Latin-based European languages (Esperanto, English, Spanish, French,
German, Dutch, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, Turkish, Danish,
Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian,
Croatian, Slovak, Czech, Welsh, Gaelic, Catalan and Portuguese),
Modern Greek, most of the Cyrillic-based languages (Russian,
Byelorussian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Moldavian, Ukrainian,
Azerbaijani/Azeri, Abkazh, Kazakh etc) and most of the
Devanagari-based languages (Hindi, Nepali, Marathi, Bihari etc)
most of the Bengali-based
languages (Bangla, Assamese, Manipuri etc), Hiragana,
Katakana and Bopomofo. It also includes all IPA
symbols, phonetic modifiers and tone letters.
ALPHABETUM
samples:
More font samples in
different languages and IPA (PDF file, 6 pages, 283 kb)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
NEW IN
VERSION 15.00 (January 2024)
This is a
minor update. The main changes compared
to version 14.00 (released March 2020, see below) are the following:
• Added
252 new characters belonging to different Unicode blocks.
NEW IN
VERSION 14.00 (March 2020)
The main changes in version 14.00 compared
to v.12.00 (released March 2017, see below) are the following:
• Added
150 new characters belonging to
different Unicode blocks.
• Elymaic -
full coverage.
• Old Permic
(Abur / Anbur alphabet) - full coverage.
• Cyrillic Extended-B - full
coverage.
• Supplemental Punctuation
- full
coverage.
• Latin Extended D
- full coverage.
NEW IN
VERSION 12.00 (March 2017)
This is a major update. The main changes compared
to version 11.25 (released June 2014, see below) are the following:
• Added
814 new characters belonging to
different Unicode blocks.
• Hieroglyphic
Meroitic - full coverage.
• Cursive Meroitic -
full coverage.
• Old Turkic (Orkhon and
Yenisei variants) - full coverage.
• Old Hungarian (rovásírás)
- full coverage.
• Byzantine Musical
Symbols - full coverage.
• Letterlike Symbols
- full coverage.
• Combining Diacritical Marks
Supplement - full coverage.
• Combining Diacritical Marks
for Symbols - full coverage.
• Many additions in the Latin
part not available in standard fonts (especially for transliteration
purposes)
NEW
IN VERSION 11.25 (June 2014)
This is a major update. The main changes compared
to version 10.25 (released October 2012) are the following:
• Added
282 new characters belonging to
different Unicode blocks.
• Imperial
Aramaic - full coverage.
• Inscriptional Parthian -
full coverage.
• Inscriptional Pahlavi
- full coverage.
• Phaistos Disc -
full coverage.
• Full set of diacritics -
combining (for use with any base character) or spacing (for display by
themselves).
• Many additions in the Latin
part not available in standard fonts (especially for transliteration
purposes).
• All characters from
MUFI
recommendation v. 1.0 is included in ALPHABETUM, and also many from
v. 2.0 and 3.0 (but not complete coverage yet).
• Added the following
OpenType
features: old style numbers, small capitals, standard ligatures
(fi, fl, ffl etc), discretionary ligatures (ct, st, ae, oe, ob, ot),
historical forms (long s), stylistic alternates (dotless i).
If you wish to see all characters the ALPHABETUM Unicode
font contains (7,620 signs in version 14.00) click on the following
link:
ALPHABETUM character set (PDF
document, 34 pages, 3,7 MB).
ADVICE: The font uses many slots in the Private Use Area block (PUA)
of Unicode (code points E000-F8FF), so it is entirely possibly, that
the same slots are used by other fonts for other purposes. In general,
the PUA contains: A)- signs not included by Unicode in its
standard and B)- some alternate glyphs.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
USER'S MANUAL
For more details on the font and
information about Unicode, characters present in ALPHABETUM,
description and examples of languages which this font supports, different input
methods, font samples, customized services I offer and other technical
issues of interest, please read the ALPHABETUM user's Manual
(106 pages, PDF format, 3,1 MB).
SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
Only a Windows
version of ALPHABETUM is currently available, however this font should
be usable on Macintosh running OSX. This is not a problem, since MacOSX
recognizes PC Unicode fonts without complaint. (Note that you will need
to restart the computer to fully install the font).
For Unix/Linux systems: I have had reports of people using
ALPHABETUM successfully under these systems, however, I have only
tested myself the font under Debian. In any case, you need to configure
your Xfree server to recognize and to use TrueType/OpenType fonts in
Unix/Linux.
You also need a word processor which supports a Unicode
font.
Mac users. There is a great variety of
Unicode-aware text processors on MacOSX.
You can use SUE, Pepper, Mellel, Nisus Writer, NeoOffice,
Pages, Papyrus, AbiWord or even TextEdit, which comes with the Mac, for
rendering Unicode. Among them, probably Mellel is the best and with a
reasonable price.
At the time of writing, Word 2004 is the first version AT
LAST Unicode
compatible; however, does not support RTL direction of writing. See
Alan Wood's site for further details.
Pc users. Recent versions of MS Word (MS Word
97, Ms Word 2000 /2002/2003/2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 and 2021)
support
Unicode
(not MS Word 95 and earlier versions). OpenOffice for Windows supports
Unicode very nicely.
Word Perfect 18 (WP Office X9) for Windows does not support Unicode
however.
Unix/Linux users. StarOffice, OpenOffice, LibreOffice
and KWord
support Unicode. However, the Unicode editor Yudit (only plain text) is
one of the best in contemporary Unicode support under Unix/Linux system.
All recent web
browsers (Internet Explorer, Nestcape, Mozilla Firefox, Edge, Chrome,
Chromium and
Opera on Windows; OmniWeb, Chimera, Camino, Safari and Mozilla on
Macintosh) support Unicode.
UNICODE INPUT METHODS
First of all, please note that the fonts do not come with
any keyboard drivers to access all the many charactes in it! Please use
the native tools or keyboard drivers of your computing platform.
ALPHABETUM is a large font which contains thousands of characters.
This means that ALPHABETUM (like all Unicode fonts)
operates slightly differently to normal fonts: for example, the Unicode
Greek fonts tend to contain a Roman font as well as a Greek font, and
indeed, the Greek cannot be accessed directly from the keyboard at all.
Pressing 'l' on the keyboard will produce a 'l' on the screen, non the
Greek letter lambda, so some kind of utility is required to produce a
Greek letter of any kind.
Naturally you can use the Symbol/Insert command to enter
characters, however this is a hard, tedious and laborious task. This is
fine for rarely used characters but too slow for things you use all the
time.
Windows contains various keyboard drivers to type the most
common languages including polytonic Greek, however, unfortunately
Windows does not currently offer an input method for many ancient
scripts (Gothic, Runic, Ogham, Ugaritic, Linear B, Cypriot, Old Italic,
Glagolitic, Avestan, Brahmi, Aramaic, Pahlavi etc).
Therefore, users need to use additional input methods to
enter these signs.
There are very good alternatives available, however.
At the time of this writing, the most important utilities
for inputting ancient scripts are the following (both for free):
MULTIKEY by Stefan Hagel (with support for many scripts including
polytonic Greek, Gothic, Coptic, Ogham, classical Latin, Old Italic and
Ugaritic, currently from my point of view perhaps the most complete
keyboard utility as far as ancient scripts is concerned) and KEYMAN by
Tavultesoft Software.
There are few keyboards designed for ancient scripts
to run under Keyman, furthermore, you can create your own keyboard to
fit your special needs.
The main advantage of Keyman is that this application
allows users to enter Unicode text in all Windows applications
(PowerPoint, Access and Excell) as well.
For those interested in polytonic Greek, there is also a
manual (in Spanish, 30 pages) describing the ANTIOCH utility, including
screenshots and guiding users step by step.
There is also a guide for Multikey 5.00 (again in Spanish,
24 pages).
These guides can be downloaded from the ALPHABETUM Spanish page.
I have also
written a manual in Spanish about configuration and use of Sibylla. It
is available on request.
Character maps such as BABELMAP (only Windows version) and
POPCHAR (Windows and Mac versions) are very helpful to insert Unicode
signs in any application as well.
MY TEMPLATES (MACROS) FOR
WORD
Fully aware of the
difficulty to enter Unicode text and in order to facilitate the
insertion of special signs (metrical symbols, Old English characters
etc) I have created different templates (macros) to use under Word
which provides an easy and suitable way to access directly to Old
English characters (including Saxon typefaces variants) and metrical
signs present in the ALPHABETUM font by using shortcut keys.
I also provide a document in pdf format with information
on how to install and use the templates (*.dot files) and the list of
keystroke combinations (shortcut keys) required to get the
aforementioned specific characters on your PC.
If you are interested in these templates, please click on
the following link to download them. Templates for WORD
278 kb.
However,
note that they are only fully operative with the full version of the
ALPHABETUM font, these templates only work partially with ALPHA-Demo
and evidently they won't function at all in case you try to use them
with other fonts.
DOWNLOAD
AREA:
TRIAL VERSION OF ALPHABETUM
A
trial version of ALPHABETUM, named ALPHA-Test is available from this
site.
The download also includes an extensive manual in English (106
pages in PDF format) which contains information about how to type
ancient languages with a computer. The manual includes the description
of several ancient scripts showing samples written with the font as
well.
Font package
ZIP file 4.05 MB (ALPHABETUM
user's manual 106 pages + demo font 
)
This is a large
file; therefore, please be patient!
ADVICES:
Note that around 500
characters of this demo font bear the watermark "DEMO" which appears
under or above the glyphs. Nevertheless, the trial version of the font
(ALPHA-Test) has the same amount of signs than the full version
(ALPHABETUM Unicode) which, obviously, does not show the watermarks.
PRICE OF THE FONT
ALPHABETUM is the result of long hours of investigation and hard work.
Font development is a painstaking, time-consuming task and ALPHABETUM
is a single person's work.
This font is not free. Nevertheless, it has the lowest possible price*.
Please see different options and licenses below.
*ADVICE: Due to the current fluctuation in the
exchange rate among different currencies, only prices in Euro can be
guaranteed. The prices in US$ and other currencies depend on the actual
exchange rate (at the date of this writing, January 2024, 1 euro is
equivalent to 1,10 US dollars).
Do not worry about converting the Euro
price into your currency, PayPal will do this when you make your
payment.
If you
like to have ALPHABETUM and the different templates I have created (Metrics, Old
English and Gothic) to use under Word which provide
an easy and convenient
way to access directly to many characters present in ALPHABETUM by using shortcut keys, with their
corresponding user's guides, plus other additional programs (keyboard
controlers for Windows, Mac and Linux, Unicode editors, character maps
etc) mailed to your address on a CDRom, there is extra cost, please see
information given below.
Disclaimer: The aforementioned software bundled
with the font on the CDRom is evidently freesoftware or shared programs
which can be freely distributed and all documentations which the
different authors provide remain intact. The original programs have not
been altered at all. I do not charge users a fee for these programs. I
only charge users for shipping and handling.
The full version of the font is available on request. Please read
the manual (chapter 56) for further information about the different
methods of acquiring ALPHABETUM.
ONLINE
PAYMENT
If you own a credit or debit card (Visa®, MasterCard®,
Discover®, Maestro® and
American Express®, you can pay online, which means purchase can be made
in a matter of clicks.
This payment is being backed by PayPal®, a global leader in online
payment solutions. To make payments with PapyPal is easy, fast, free
and secure for buyers. Naturally, your transaction will be confidential
and the information you give will not be used for any reason other than
the use intended. PayPal protects your security. (Note: You are not
required to have a Paypal account. By following the instructions on the
Paypal page, you may make your payment by credit card or bank transfer.)
LICENSES AND PRICES
Depending on
your choice, click on the corresponding button below to purchase
ALPHABETUM online. In order to avoid errors, please read carefully the
information given below before clicking on the PayPal button to order
ALPHABETUM. Please be careful with your choice
since depending on it you will get one item or other.
Option
1) - Restricted individual license. ALPHABETUM (€15, approximately US
$16 or £12, please
read ADVICE above*). The font will be sent as attachment to your email
account. Note that the font contains PDF restriction, (i.d. embedding
is disabled). This
means that you won't be able to generate PDF files running Adobe
Acrobat, for instance. An error message will appear on your screen if
you try to produce a PDF document. Print and preview is allowed,
however.
You also are not entitled to use the font in printed books nor to
publish electronic documents in the web. If you wish a version of the
font with unrestricted embedding, choose below option Full operative
individual license 2.
Option
2) - Full operative individual license. Single user license.
ALPHABETUM (€30, approximately US
$32 or £24, please
read ADVICE above*). The font will be sent as
attachment to your email account. The font has not restrictions at
all. All features are enabled. Even embedding is allowed: this means
that the font may be embedded in documents to produce PDF documents
running Adobe Acrobat. You also are entitled to use the
font in a printed book (however, the typesetter or publisher may not
use the font for other purposes without acquiring an appropriate
license) or to produce electronic documents which can be uploaded into
your web page and distributed in the internet, but you are obliged to
send me a copy of the book or electronic document in which the font is
used.
Option 3)
- Multiple computer license and publishing license. ALPHABETUM (€45, approximately US
$49 or £38, please
read ADVICE above*). The font will be
sent as attachment to your email account. The font has
not
restrictions at all. All features are enabled. Even embedding is
allowed: this means that the font may be embedded in documents to
produce PDF documents running Adobe Acrobat.
For that
moderate price, ALPHABETUM can be installed on up to three computers
used primarily by the purchaser
as an individual (e.g. desktop
computer in office, desktop computer in home, and laptop). If you need
to install the font on more computers, please contact me for
information.
Publishing houses are
entitled to use the font in printed books or to produce electronic
documents which can be sold in their web pages. The publishing house
and individuals are not required to send me a copy of the book in which
the font is used.
This type of license is also appropriate for software developers who
wish to use the font in free or commercial applications.
This license permits that
ALPHABETUM can be used as a web-font
(WOFF, EOT or SVG formats) in a webpage as well.
An experimental italic version of the font which contains 1,371
glyphs is also supplied with this type of license if the user has
interest in testing it and requests me to include the font in the
attachment.
Option 4) - Multiple-user license or
colective license (Department license). ALPHABETUM (€100, approximately US $110 or £85, please read ADVICE
above*). The font
will
be sent as attachment to your email account. The font has not restrictions at
all. All features are enabled. Even embedding is allowed: this means
that the font may be embedded in documents to produce PDF documents
running Adobe Acrobat.
This license permits
installations on up to 10 computers in the department's principal
campus locations (i.e., departmental offices, departmental seminar and
research rooms, departmental library suites), faculty home computers
may be included in the total of permitted installations. If you need to install the font
on more computers, please contact me for information.
The department and its members may use the fonts in all scholarly and
teaching activities, in printing documents and in preparing PDF's for
distribution to others. However, the department and its members may not
alter or redistribute the font to students and others.
Option
5)
- Upgrade to the latest version of ALPHABETUM (v 15.00 January
2024).
Only for registered users of previous versions of the font. If you are a
registered user of ALPHABETUM, update to version 15.00
for only €8 (approximately
US
$9 or £6, please read ADVICE above*). The font will be sent as
attachment to your email account.
---------------------------------------------------
IMPORTANT THINGS TO NOTE:
1.- Whatever option you choose, please send me a message after making
the payment to confirm that you are really who ordered the font.
2.- In most cases I will reply to your message in due time (normally
within a day or so), unless I was on holydays, then it will take a
little more time, since I only will be able to check my emails from
time to time, (usually every three days, more or less or even a little
more during the summer) so be patient, however, be sure that you will
receive my response. Sorry for this inconvenience.
3.- Obviously, any modification or public distribution of ALPHABETUM is
not permited under any circumstance.
CUSTOMIZED SERVICES
If you acquire the
full version of ALPHABETUM Unicode font you will get:
- Technical support:
Registered users get free technical support. I will try to resolve
problems that are reported to me.
- Finding what you
need: ALPHABETUM contains all the regular characters for the languages
mentioned above in precomposed characters or combining diacritical
marks. I have taken much care over this piece of work and I have read
many documents relating to different languages, but, clearly, I don't
know all these languages, and, perhaps some important character that
you need may be missing or badly drawn. If this occurs, please send me
a message detailing exactly what you need and I shall include it, free
of any additional charge, of course. For other more important
corrections or additions, consult me.
For more information, please read the User's Manual.
AUTHOR
Just in case you are
wondering who is Juan-José Marcos, click here and you will find some
information about the author of the ALPHABETUM Unicode font and
this website.
SUGGESTIONS
AND QUERIES
I have taken care
to see that ALPHABETUM works as well as possible, but this font is the
work of only one person, any errors or faults which it contains are
mine, so if you find any wrong code or any “bug” in the font, feel free
to email me.
Although you do not
purchase the font, please, send me comments, suggestions for
improvements or anything else regarding ALPHABETUM. I would like to
know your opinion about the font.
I really
would appreciate having users' feedback.
Such reaction from
users will be the deciding factor in my decision of carrying on with
the development of ALPHABETUM.
Do not hesitate to
contact me. Thanks.
If ALPHABETUM is
well received, it will be expanded in the near future (basic Aegyptian hieroglyphics,
Linear A, more kerning pairs, more characters, more “Open
Type” features and so forth).
PALAEOGRAPHIC
FONTS FOR LATIN SCRIPT
NOTICE:
If you wish to imitate more accurately in your electronic documents the
Latin handwriting as it appears in medieval manuscripts, please visit
the page entitled “Palaeographic fonts for Latin script” which I have
created; there you will find information about the different Latin
handwriting models and a collections of fonts (namely Capitalis
Rustica, Capitalis Elegans, Uncialis, Insularis minuscula,
Semiuncialis, Carolingia minuscula, Gothic Textura Quadrata,
Humanistica antiqua etc) which try to reproduce properly the
characteristics of their corresponding ancient lettering: Capital
Rustic, Uncial, Insular minuscule, Half-uncial, Caroline or
Carolingian, Gothic and Humanistic.
These fonts are based on
hand-drawn renderings of medieval handwriting styles, genuine
calligraphy and they include specialty characters, abbreviations,
ligatures and alternate forms for some letters.
For further information and
visual samples, please visit the Palaeographic fonts page devoted to my
fonts for Latin palaeography.
Paleographic
Latin fonts. Samples:
PALAEOGRAPHIC
FONTS FOR GREEK SCRIPT
A similar font package for Greek
Palaeography I
have recently created (ANGULAR UNCIAL, BIBLICAL UNCIAL, COPTIC UNCIAL,
PAPYRUS UNCIAL, ROUND UNCIAL, SLAVONIC UNCIAL, SLOPING UNCIAL,
MINUSCULE IX, MINUSCULE XI and
MINUSCULE XV
) is
also available. For more detailed information press HERE or click on the image below.
.
ILUSTRATED
MANUAL OF GREEK PALEOGRAPHY
Those readers interested
in reading a
true treatise
on Greek Paleography can find useful my book entitled "PALEOGRAFÍA
GRIEGA: Manual ilustrado" (in Spanish), 550 pages containing more than
100 images, published
by KDP AMAZON, December 2018.
More information about this book HERE
where you can download a wide excerpt (260 pages).
Information in the AMAZON site: https://www.amazon.es/dp/1790291771
HISTORY
OF GREEK TYPOGRAPHY
Those
readers interested in knowing about the origin and development of Greek
typefaces will find useful to read my e-book entitled “History of
Greek Typography: from the invention of printing to the Digital Age”
(440 pages profusely illustrated with lots of images of Greek books
printed by Demetrius Damilas, Bonus Acursius, Aldus Manutius, Zacharias
Callierges, Janus Lascaris, Froben, Guilles de Gourmont, Simon de
Colines, Plantin, Robert Estienne, the Elzevirs, the Foulis brothers,
Savile, Caslon, Baskerville, Didot, Bodoni, Goeschen, Richard Porson,
Watts, Hibbert, Selwyn Image, etc.).
“History
of Greek Typography: from the invention of printing to the Digital Age”
follows the history and development of Greek printing types and their role in the history of the printed word
and civilization.
The book explores every major development in the design of
Greek type and includes some lesser-known designers whose type designs
made significant contributions to the craft. The material is divided
into sections by historical period for easy reference.
The text of the book provides an excellent historical
background to the study of Greek printing types.
“History of Greek
Typography”
stands a step above other books on the history of Greek printing types
because of the number of its reproductions -some of them extremely
rare- and its straightforward and clear exposition.
This work, profusely illustrated, not only addresses the
Hellenic scholar, but also the modern writer, typographer, historian,
graphic designer, printer, publisher and font developer. For more
detailed information click HERE or
the image below.
A paperback copy can be ordered from KDP AMAZON (printed on
demand), Barnes & Noble and other booksellers.
juanjmarcos
gmail.com
Plasencia (Cáceres) Spain.
This page last updated on February 2024.
Please revisit this page from time to time for
updates.
January 2024)
