Improving DejaVu Serif for Greek

Vangelis Karageorgos  sent an e-mail to the DejaVu Fonts mailing list regarding his work on the Greek glyphs for the DejaVu Serif face.

The original Greek glyphs from DejaVu Serif 2.12 look like

The edition of DejaVu Serif (Greek) by Vangelis  Karageorgos look like

Ben Laenen from the DejaVu project, an  gave the following comments/advice

> as Simos mentioned, Serif already has Greek since a very long
> time now.
>
> however, I've never been really too happy about it [current state of Greek in Serif --simos], and some
> improvements are still pending. I also must say that I like the style
> of Vangelis' glyphs, even though it has some things I've personally
> never been too keen about, like the ita and chi without descender. In
> the glyphs I designed I also removed the serifs on the descenders,
> but they seem to work in Vangelis' style.
>
> Now, before we start thinking about replacing the glyphs in DejaVu: I
> first want to see some feedback from the Greek users to see which
> style they would like more, and what would have to be changed before
> they would accept them.
>
> Also, if these new glyphs get included, the Greek Extended block
> should be altered as well (work I'm not very keen on doing myself
> since I know how boring that work is 🙂 Some other glyphs in the
> main Greek block may need changes as well.

Now, the question is, do you like the Greek edition of DejaVu Serif by Vangelis Karageorgos? If you do like it or you do not, please say so. It would also be good to specify what elements are better in the proposed version.

Permanent link to this article: https://blog.simos.info/improving-dejavu-serif-for-greek/

5 comments

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    • annak on November 29, 2006 at 10:04
    • Reply

    Πολύ ενδιαφέρουσα δουλειά, συγχαρητήρια…

    Επειδή δεν ξέρω τί είδους σχόλια αναζητάτε, θα αναφέρω μόνο τί μου άρεσαν περισσότερο στην έκδοση του Βαγγέλη…

    Στα κεφαλαία νομίζω ότι όλα είναι πολύ καλά. Στα μικρά, γενικά, στους χαρακτήρες που έχει δύο και πλέον προτάσεις, προτιμώ την πρώτη πρόταση σε όλες τις περιπτώσεις, εκτός του ξ (νομίζω η δεύτερη είναι καλύτερη).

    Το μόνο στοιχείο στη γραμματοσειρά που δε μ’ άρεσε είναι οι “παύλες” στις κάτω κεραίες των ρ,ι,η,ψ,μ.φ.χ. Όσο για τις κοντές κεραίες των “η” και “χ” νομίζω (αν αφαιρεθούν και οι παύλες) θα είναι χαρακτηριστικά μιας πολύ όμορφης και μοντέρνας γραμματοσειράς.

    annak

  1. Ευχαριστώ!
    Τέτοια σχόλια χρειάζονται, συγκεκριμένα για τους διαθέσιμους χαρακτήρες και ποιοι (όλοι ή κάποιοι) είναι καλοί.

    • ktogias on November 29, 2006 at 13:09
    • Reply

    Χωρίς να έχω γνώσεις τυπογραφίας, συμφωνώ με το σχόλιο του annak. Οι οριζόντιες παύλες στο τελείωμα των μ,π,φ,ψ,η,χ δεν φαίνονται και τόσο ωραίες.

  2. From George Billios (fedora-trans-el @ redhat mailing list):

    Για κάποιο λόγο Σίμο αυτή την στιγμή δεν μπορώ να γράψω απάντηση στο
    blog σου οπότε την γράφω εδώ.

    Εμένα μου αρέσουν αρκετά, είναι πιο μαζεμένες και διαβάζονται πολύ καλύτερα.

    Δύο σημεία μόνο δεν μου αρέσουν:

    1. Το ‘ψ’ είναι πράγματι σαν τρίαινα!

    2. Οι κάτω παύλες σε μερικά γράμματα πχ. ‘φ’ δεν είναι ωραίες.

    Μπράβο στον Βαγγέλη για την δουλειά του.

    • BP Jonsson on November 30, 2006 at 16:44
    • Reply

    I like both — except for the η which looks like a Latin n, though for various reasons.

    From the perspective of what Classicists and historical linguists who deal with Ancient Greek expect the old glyphs are more traditional and hence preferable since they are not noticeable, as text glyphs shouldn’t.

    I can however sympathize if the tastes and expectations of readers of Modern Greek differ. When in Greece and Cyprus I have seen some quite ‘untraditional’ fonts in advertizing, but I don’t know what the usual choice for ordinary text in Modern Greek is; DejaVu Serif should be a text and not an advertizing font, and I think most people agree.

    I don’t know what the Modern Greek position WRT straight vs. oblique faces is, but since Classicists’ editions tend to use only a single oblique style, so if many writers of Modern Greek like the ‘new’ glyphs
    then perhaps the ‘old’ style glyphs could be kept in the oblique font? Just a thought.

    As a comparative philologist used to see Greek letters used to augmenting the Latin alphabet when transcribing in particular Old Iranian languages (mainly βγδθ used for their Modern Greek sounds, sometimes also η as an unfortunate substitute for ŋ) I might even prefer the ‘new’ glyphs as they would mix better with Roman, but here the real solution should be to get Iranist transcription into Unicode as its own script.

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