
Gentium SIL Release 1.01
17 September 2003
========================

Thank you for your interest in the Gentium fonts.
We hope you find them useful!

Gentium ("belonging to the nations" in Latin) is a Unicode typeface family
designed to enable the many diverse ethnic groups around the world who use
the Latin script to produce readable, high-quality publications. It supports
a wide range of Latin-based alphabets and includes glyphs that correspond to
all the Latin ranges of Unicode.

The design is intended to be highly readable, reasonably compact, and
visually attractive. The additional 'extended' Latin letters are designed to
naturally harmonize with the traditional 26 ones. Diacritics are treated
with careful thought and attention to their use. Gentium also supports both
ancient and modern Greek, including a number of alternate forms.

Read and print out the Gentium-RU-Specimen.pdf, Gentium-RU-A3Proofs.pdf and
Gentium-Greek-Specimen.pdf files for a detailed description of the Gentium
Project and various examples of multilingual text rendering.

See the INSTALL file for the manual installation procedure.
See the HISTORY and CHANGELOG files to learn more about how Gentium started.
See the QUOTES file to read the feedback received from Gentium users.
See the FAQ file for frequently asked questions and their answers.
See the COPYING file for the licensing terms.
See the ISSUES file for current problems being investigated.
And the THANKS file giving credit to those who inspired, helped and gave
their support to the Gentium Project.


TIPS
=====
Since Gentium is freeware, there is no offer of technical support. The font
has, however, been through some testing on various FLOSS (Free/Libre and
Open Source Software) platforms to be sure it works in most situations.

If you do find a problem, please do report it to <gentium AT sil DOT org>.
We can't guarantee any direct response, but will try to fix reported bugs in
future versions. Make sure you read through the Gentium FAQ.

Many problems can be solved, or at least explained, through an understanding
of the encoding and use of the fonts. Here are some basic hints:

Encoding: 
The fonts are encoded according to Unicode, so your application must support
Unicode text in order to access letters other than the standard alphabet.

Keyboarding:
Gentium does not include any keyboarding helps or utilities. It uses the
built-in keyboards of the operating system. You will need to install the
appropriate keyboard and input method for the characters of the language you
wish to use.

If you want to enter characters that are not supported by any system
keyboard, and to access the full Unicode range, we suggest you use
gucharmap, kcharselect or similar software.

Another method of entering specific symbols is provided by a few
applications such as OpenOffice.org. They can display a palette that shows
all the glyphs (symbols) in a font allowing you to select the desired glyph
and insert it directly into your text. This is available in the
application's menu under Insert->Special Characters. (A pull-down menu will
also allow you to identify the sub-section within a particular font.)
Abiword and Kword's special character dialogs only allow access to a smaller
selection of glyphs.

Rendering:
Gentium also currently lacks any special font programming that can
substitute one glyph for another or position glyphs in a 'smart' way, such
as in OpenType, Apple Advanced Typography or SIL's Graphite. For example,
although Gentium includes an 'ffl' ligature, there are no special routines
in the font that will automatically substitute 'f'+'f'+'l' with 'ffl', but
an individual application might provide that feature.


NORMAL AND ALT FONTS
====================
Why does this package include two different versions of the fonts:
Gentium and GentiumAlt?

Since Gentium does not currently include any 'smart' rendering routines,
there is no easy way to access the alternate diacritic shapes that are
included.

As an interim measure, the font has been provided in two versions. Gentium
includes the 'normal' versions of diacritics. GentiumAlt has diacritics that
are flatter, specifically for languages such as Vietnamese that use multiple
accents. This alternate font also uses the Porsonic Greek circumflex (a
small semicircle instead of the tilde-like shape).

The encoding of the fonts are the same, so the same text can be viewed with
either one.


CONTACT
========
For more information please visit the Gentium page on SIL International's
Computers and Writing systems website:
http://scripts.sil.org/gentium

Or send an email to <gentium AT sil DOT org>
