- Culmus-announce - lists.mailman3.com

Experimental OpenType support in Culmus fonts

by Maxim Iorsh

Shalom! I'm glad to announce the release of an experimental OpenType font under the auspices of Culmus project. This is an instance of Frank Ruehl, aimed to allow testing of Hebrew OpenType support in various applications. The font can be found in the Developers' area of the Culmus site (http://culmus.sf.net) and it comes together with a Unicode test file, and a sample postscript output which demonstrates what the correct rendering should look like. Meanwhile, I achieved the following results with most common software environments: 1. Gnome - supported with Pango 1.8 and glib 2.6.2. This support is due to the patch by Dov Grobgeld, available in pango 1.6 or later (included e.g. in Mandrake cooker or Fedora Core 3). Dov also kindly agreed to test my font on his machine, and the positive results of this test were very encouraging for me. 2. KDE - supported with Qt 3.3.3 and kdebase 3.2.3. I believe all versions of Qt starting from 3.2 support OpenType, but from my experience the support is rather buggy. 3. OpenOffice.org - not supported with version 1.1.3 on Linux, see bug 16032 (http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=16032) 4. Windows - supported with XP SP2 (usp10.dll version 1.0420.2600.2180). On some systems applications such as Word or Notepad display the text properly, but tend to crash while using this font. I would be glad to receive your comments or reports about the state of OpenType support in additional environments. Please post your replies to ivrix-discuss, to avoid splitting the discussion over different lists. Best regards, Maxim.

March 5, 2005

Bugfix release 0.101 of Culmus fonts

by Maxim Iorsh

Dear fellows! This release is aimed to repair the long-standing "tet" bug in Nachlieli. Largely due to negligence on my part, this bug used to plague at least two major distributions rendering them practically unusable. I'd like to thank Dotan Kamber, Dovix and Noam Meltzer, people whose deep involvement made it possible to localize the bug and release this fix. As usual, the fonts can be downloaded from the site of the Culmus project: http://culmus.sourceforge.net. With best regards, Maxim. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Changes from the previous version: Tet bug fixed in Ellinia CLM Light, David CLM Bold, Miriam Mono CLM Bold, Miriam Mono CLM Bold Oblique, Nachlieli CLM Light, Nachlieli CLM Light Oblique. More information is available at http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/show_bug.cgi?id=11502

Dec. 19, 2004

Re: Version 0.100 of Culmus fonts released

by Diego Iastrubni

בSaturday 12 June 2004 22:15, נכתב על ידי Maxim Iorsh: > Ktav Yad has been removed from the main package, because I never liked it. > It is available separately from the "Fancy fonts" section at the site. I liked that one :) It is a pitty it had no Latin letters. -- diego, kde-il translation team Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html Free MS-Office replacement for most platforms http://www.openoffice.org/

June 13, 2004

Version 0.100 of Culmus fonts released

by Maxim Iorsh

Shalom rav! With shaking knees I announce hereby the new release of Culmus fonts. This is a major release which contains two new typefaces, which will hopefully compensate for the mess it is about to create. The first typeface is my edition of the classic Miriam typeface, originally attributed to Raphael Frank. The second is a drawing typeface inspired by David Siegel's Tekton. I named it 'Yehuda' in honor of my friend Ilya, who once asked me for some nice comic font. A propos de mess, as you might have expected, the default font sizes did change. After long consideration I decided to reduce the serif fonts (David, Frank, Drugulin) by ~16% and the grotesque fonts (Ellinia, Aharoni, Nachlieli) by ~8%. This doesn't make these fonts fit perfectly their Windows/Mac counterparts, but they are now quite close to each other. Default spacing between lines was enlarged in most fonts (notably in David), to achieve better readability. IMPORTANT NOTE: The fonts now carry new names, with a suffix "CLM". This has been done partially in order to adhere to common conventions, and partially in order to allow people to install the new fonts alongside the old ones and avoid having their documents broken. Those who choose the last option should simply install the new fonts manually from the tarball. For those who wish to upgrade, there is a file culmus.conf installed by the RPM in /etc/fonts. This file doesn't fix the size, but at least it allows fontconfig-enabled software to substitute automatically new font names for the old ones. Ktav Yad has been removed from the main package, because I never liked it. It is available separately from the "Fancy fonts" section at the site. The fonts can be downloaded from the site of the Culmus project: http://culmus.sourceforge.net. With best regards, Maxim. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Complete list of changes: 1. Miriam - a new grotesque typeface in medium and bold variations. 2. Yehuda - a new architect typeface in light and bold variations. 3. Ktav Yad discontinued from the main package. 4. Serif typefaces David, Drugulin and Frank Ruehl reduced by 17% to better match Windows/Mac counterparts. 5. Sans-serif typefaces Aharoni, Ellinia and Nachlieli reduced by 8%. 6. Space between lines enlarged in most typefaces to improve readability. 7. All font names now end with "CLM", to avoid confusion with non-Culmus fonts. 8. A new menorah symbol added to Caladings.

June 12, 2004

"Comix No2" - a new comic font

by Maxim Iorsh

Hello! I have released a new font named "Comix No2". It was designed in the spirit of "MS Comic Sans" to serve for lettering of comic strips. The font comes in two variations: medium and bold. As usual, you are welcome to get it in the "Fancy fonts" section at the Culmus site (http://culmus.sf.net) Best regards, Maxim. P. S. The name of the font suggests, that there also exists "Comix No1". Indeed it was the name of the preliminary version, which was shelved in the course of development.

March 28, 2004

Version 0.93 of Culmus fonts released

by Maxim Iorsh

Ladies and Gentlemen! At the very last day of the semester, I'm glad to announce the new release of Culmus fonts. This is a minor release which focuses primarily on improving the on-screen presentation and readability. The fonts can be downloaded from the site of the Culmus project: http://culmus.sourceforge.net. In addition, some of you might have noticed that another two fonts were added to the fancy collection about month ago. These are Gan and Ozrad, and I hope you will find them useful. With regards, Maxim. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Full list of changes: 1. Frank Ruehl family redrawn, together with punctuation and numerals. 2. Nachlieli family hinted to enhance the on-screen look. 3. Slash in David family was redrawn. 4. Missing "ayin" in Drugulin Bold was fixed. 5. ".notdef" character added to all the above fonts, to improve compliance with standards.

Jan. 28, 2004

"Gan" - a new fancy font

by Maxim Iorsh

Hello! I have just released a new font named "Gan". You are welcome to get it in the "Fancy fonts" section at the Culmus site (http://culmus.sf.net) Best regards, Maxim.

Jan. 8, 2004

Frank-Ruehl approaches the finish line...

by Maxim Iorsh

Ladies and Gentlemen! Yesterday I released in the Developers' section a new version of FrankRuehl typeface, in normal and bold variations. This release includes a major typefacelifting :) to both fonts, i. e. various visual fixes, implementations of all characters requested or required for any reason, and kerning. This release has all chances to become final, unless I get some bug reports. Best regards, Maxim.

Dec. 16, 2003

"Ozrad" - a new fancy font

by Maxim Iorsh

Hello! I have just released a new font named "Ozrad". You are welcome to get it in the "Fancy fonts" section at the Culmus site (http://culmus.sf.net) Best regards, Maxim.

Dec. 4, 2003

TeX-specific release of Frank-Ruehl

by Maxim Iorsh

Hello! Following a conversation with Ron Artstein on the Ivritex mailing list, I'm releasing a new preview of the Frank-Ruehl typeface. This release fixes an aleph-lamed ligature issue and adds opening/closing quotes, en-dash, en-dash, pound and euro signs. I also decided to lower gershayim a little bit, such that they look identically to closing upper quotes, but are located ~5% lower. I'm not sure whether it makes any difference, but so it is. Please let me know your objections or comments. I also intend to redraw numerals and punctuation, but it will take time. Best regards, Maxim.

Oct. 25, 2003