Gentium (, from the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

for "of the nations") is a

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

serif

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are list of type ...

free Free may refer to: Concept * Freedom, having the ability to do something, without having to obey anyone/anything * Freethought, a position that beliefs should be formed only on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism * Emancipate, to procur ...

and

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

software, and are released under the

SIL Open Font License The SIL Open Font License (or OFL in short) is one of the major open font licenses, which allows embedding, or "bundling", of the font in commercially sold products. OFL is a free and open source license. It was created by SIL International ...

(OFL), which permits modification and redistribution. Gentium has wide support for languages using the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

, and

Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...

alphabets, and the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...

(IPA). Gentium Plus variants released in November 2010 now include over 5,500

glyph A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...

s and advanced typographic features through

OpenType OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark o ...

and

Graphite Graphite () is a crystalline form of the element carbon. It consists of stacked layers of graphene. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable form of carbon under standard conditions. Synthetic and natural graphite are consumed on large ...

History and variants

Gentium and GentiumAlt

The original release of ''Gentium'' defined roughly 1,500

s covering almost all of the range of

characters used worldwide, as well as

monotonic In mathematics, a monotonic function (or monotone function) is a function between ordered sets that preserves or reverses the given order. This concept first arose in calculus, and was later generalized to the more abstract setting of order ...

and

polytonic Greek Greek orthography has used a variety of diacritics starting in the Hellenistic period. The more complex polytonic orthography ( el, πολυτονικό σύστημα γραφής, translit=polytonikó sýstīma grafī́s), which includes fiv ...

, designed to flow in harmony with the Latin. Gentium comes with a variant called ''GentiumAlt'' ("Gentium Alternative"), which contains flatter

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

s intended to improve the appearance of letters with multiple diacritics, as well as a glyph variant of the

circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...

that resembles an

inverted breve Inverted breve or arch is a diacritical mark, shaped like the top half of a circle ( ̑ ), that is, like an upside-down breve (˘). It looks similar to the circumflex (ˆ), which has a sharp tip (''Â â Ê ê Î î Ô ô Û û''), whil ...

. In 2003, the Gentium font was awarded a Certificate of Excellence in Type Design from the

Association Typographique Internationale The ATypI () or Association Typographique Internationale (the International Typography Association) is an international non-profit organisation dedicated to typography and type design. The primary activity of the association is an annual fall confe ...

(ATypI) as one of the best designs of the previous five years.

Gentium Basic fonts

In November 2007, the Gentium Basic and Gentium Book Basic fonts were released, containing Gentium fonts in four faces: regular, italic, bold, and bold italic. Gentium Basic has the same

weight In science and engineering, the weight of an object is the force acting on the object due to gravity. Some standard textbooks define weight as a Euclidean vector, vector quantity, the gravitational force acting on the object. Others define weigh ...

as the previous Gentium fonts, while Gentium Book Basic is set at a slightly heavier weight for use in publishing books at small point sizes, or under certain printing conditions. While these fonts contain bold and bold italic variants, they do not contain the full range of glyphs, especially most Greek letters. These fonts are said to be in

beta testing Software testing is the act of examining the artifacts and the behavior of the software under test by validation and verification. Software testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to apprecia ...

and are intended to provide a boldface weight for general applications in the interim while the full bold and bold italic character set is developed.

Gentium Plus fonts

An updated version of the roman and italic fonts called ''Gentium Plus'', which includes the full extended Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic coverage, was released in November 2010. Gentium Plus variants containing an additional 3,800 glyphs, including Cyrillic and additional coverage of the IPA, were added in 2010 in a release called ''Gentium Plus''. Released shortly afterward was a variant called "Gentium Plus Compact", which has compact spacing for aesthetic reasons. Both Gentium Plus and Gentium Plus Compact include regular and italic variants of over 5500 glyphs. Since the initial release of the Gentium Plus fonts, the focus of the project has shifted to completing bold and bold italic weights of the Gentium Plus family, as well as the creation of a "Gentium Book Plus" family with a slightly heavier weight which may be useful at small sizes. These are the weights that are currently available in the Gentium Basic and Gentium Book Basic fonts.

Open source development

The ongoing development of the font welcomes contributions from its users. Gentium was released under the Open Font License on November 28, 2005. Other typefaces released under the OFL include

Charis SIL Charis SIL is a transitional serif typeface developed by SIL International based on Bitstream Charter, one of the first fonts designed for laser printers. The font offers four family members: roman, bold, italic, and bold italic. Its design goal ...

and

Doulos SIL Doulos SIL (Ancient Greek for "slave") is a serif typeface developed by SIL International, very similar to Times or Times New Roman. Unlike Times New Roman, Doulos only has a single face, Regular. The goal of its design according to the SIL In ...

References

External links

Gentium — a typeface for the nationsSIL Open Font License (OFL)
*Gentium for

LaTeX Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...

package
{{Free and open-source typography Old style serif typefaces Free software Unicode typefaces Greek typefaces Typefaces and fonts introduced in 2001