
Gentium FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)


General
========

How do you pronounce Gentium?

	The preferred pronunciation is with a soft G as in 'general', not a
	hard one as in 'gold': JEN-tee-oom.

What is GentiumAlt?

	It is a version of the font with redesigned diacritics (flatter
	ones) to make it more suitable for use with stacking diacritics, and
	for languages such as Vietnamese. The Greek glyphs also use the
	Porsonic (single-curve) design for the circumflex. Since Gentium
	does not currently include any 'smart' rendering routines, there is
	no easy way to access these alternate diacritic shapes from within
	the regular Gentium font. The encoding of the fonts are the same, so
	the same text can be viewed with either one. There is also no
	problem with having both font families installed at the same time.


Licensing
=========

I would like to bundle Gentium with my application. Can you give me
permission?

	This is our most common question. At this point, the license does
	not allow this. You would need to negotiate a separate distribution
	license with us. If you are interested in this (and understand that
	it will likely require some type of payment) please contact us. We
	are looking toward more open development and licensing models, but
	that will take time.

Can I use the font on my web site?

	You can certainly create web pages that request that Gentium be used
	to display them (if that font is available on the user's system).
	According to the license, you are even allowed to place the font on
	your site for people to download it, but only if there is no charge
	and the distribution file is identical to the one on our site. We
	would strongly prefer, however, that you direct users to our site to
	download the font.
	To make this easier, we've simplified the URL for Gentium: 
	http://scripts.sil.org/gentium

Is Gentium going to stay free (as in freeware), or is it just a teaser for a
later commercial version?

	We do understand your concern here. There is no intention to ever
	charge users for using Gentium. Those wishing to include Gentium
	with a commercial product or bundle it with other items for sale,
	however, would likely be required to pay licensing fees.


Technical
=========

Can you help me get Gentium working on my system?

	Because Gentium is freeware, we cannot afford to offer individual
	technical support. The best resource is this website, where we hope
	to offer some limited help. However, we do want to hear of any
	problems you encounter, so that we can add them to the list of bugs
	to fix in later releases. 
	Our contact address is <gentium AT sil DOT org>.
	Please understand that we cannot guarantee a personal response.

I can't find all the extended Latin letters in the font. How do I type them?

	Gentium is Unicode-encoded, which means that the computer stores a
	special, unique code for each letter in your document. Since most
	keyboards do not have hundreds of keys, special software is needed
	in order to type the hundreds of special characters supported by the
	font. 
	
I can't find the 'o with right hook' in the font. Where is it?

	Combinations of base letters with diacritics are often called
	composite, or pre-composed glyphs. Gentium has hundreds of these
	(the ones that are included in Unicode). There are, however, many
	common combinations that are not represented by a single composite.
	It is possible to enter these into a document, but only as
	individual components. So 'o with right hook' would be entered as
	'o', then 'right hook'. Although this may not look very good in some
	cases, we're not able to anticipate every possible combination.
	Future versions of Gentium will include 'smart font' support for
	technologies such as OpenType and SIL's Graphite. This will make
	diacritic positioning much better.
	
Some diacritics are not aligning well with base glyphs, and if I type more
than one diacritic, they run into each other. Why is that?

	Gentium currently has no 'smart font' code for automatic diacritic
	positioning, but will in the near future.

How do I type the Greek letters?

	You need a Unicode-compatible keyboarding system, which is not
	included in the distribution package. 
	
The Greek mu won't show up. Didn't you include it?

	It seems that in certain situations (which we have been unable to
	reproduce here) the Greek lowercase mu would not display or print.
	We tried to fix this in the current release, but cannot be sure it
	worked (because we haven't been able to see it fail). Let us know
	if we fixed it (or if we didn't). 
	
I'm having problems making PDFs -- why won't my document distill?

	Gentium is a large font, with lots of glyphs. As a result, some
	printers can balk at PDFs that have the complete font embedded. The
	easiest way to avoid this is to have Acrobat/Distiller subset the
	font. This is generally a good idea anyway (with any font) and can
	reduce the size of your files.


Future
======

Now that SIL International has taken over Gentium, who will be the next
designer?

	Victor Gaultney will remain as primary designer, but Annie Olsen, a
	fellow type designer from the SIL Non-Roman Script Initiative, has
	joined the project team. She is a former calligraphy teacher, and is
	well suited for the task. Other members of the NRSI team will also
	add their expertise in technical matters.

Do you plan to include other typographic enhancements (small caps, old style
figures, etc.)?

	Those would be nice, wouldn't they. From a design point of view,
	it would be great to have these refinements, and we haven't ruled
	them out. But there are other needs that are much higher priority
	(Bold, Cyrillic, etc.).

What about bold?

	The next major release of Gentium (sometime in 2004) will include
	Bold and Bold Italic weights. We've already done three prototypes,
	and will be making some design decisions soon. Be patient, though,
	as Gentium has lots of glyphs!
	
Sans-serif?

	There is a definite need for a sans-serif font that shares some of
	Gentium's strengths -- high readability, economy of space, etc.
	It would also be great if that font also harmonized well with
	Gentium. Although we've done some playing around with ideas for a
	sans-serif companion face for Gentium, any development would be
	quite some time into the future, and not until the full Gentium
	family is complete.
	
Will you be extending Gentium to cover other scripts, and Hebrew in
particular?

	It is very unlikely that we would do this, as there are so many
	pressing needs in Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts.
	
When will Cyrillic be completed?

	As soon as we can get it done, but it is still a few months away. 
	
I need a couple of ancient Greek glyphs, such as the digamma. When will
those be ready?

	These are high on the priority list and will be in the next release.

Will there be a Type 1 version? What about OpenType?

	The next generation of Gentium will have OpenType, as well as
	SILGraphite, support. We do not plan to produce Type 1 versions at
	this time, but please write us if this is important (and tell us
	why).

I'm using GNU/Linux (or another FLOSS-based system) and I have a
question or a comment about the Gentium package, who should I contact?

	Send an email to the package maintainer: 
	<nicolas DOT spalinger AT sil DOT org>
