Add polytonic Greek

[frankrolf]

Please provide more background info – I think it’s distracting to use issues as a wishlist. Of course polytonic Greek can be added, but can you make a case for it?

[be5invis]

@frankrolf Well you ask me to open a separate issue for IPA in #4 ... So I opened this and #22.

[practik]

I don't know if this counts as making a case (or is too obvious to bother saying), but polytonic support would be nice for setting texts that include classical Greek.

[frankrolf]

Polytonic Greek support is on my list, but at a relatively low priority.

[practik]

Sounds appropriate to me. Thanks for a fine font!

[frankrolf]

@KrasnayaPloshchad Could you please elaborate on why you think Foulis Greek is a good example for Source Serif?

[ghost]

Hello,

Let me begin by saying how grateful I am for your work and this wonderful font.

I'd like to emphasize how important having support for polytonic Greek would be for students and scholars in many fields of the humanities such as classical studies, ancient and medieval history, archeology, philosophy and theology.

Some of the oldest and most influential texts of human history are written in polytonic Greek: the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer, the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, and the New Testament of the Bible. The diacritics of polytonic Greek continued to be used througout the middle ages in Byzantium up until the modern age. In fact, in modern Greece the monotonic orthography was imposed by law only as late as 1982.

I'm afraid I personally neither have the typographic expertise nor the technical skills to propose a design suitable for Source Serif. I did however compile a quick overview over the diacritics needed set in Minion, which – to my eyes – handles the diacritics rather nicely (albeit for some kerning errors I tried to correct).

(Edit: I swapped spiritus asper and lenis by mistake.)

Wikipedia also has a useful article on Greek diacritics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_diacritics#Description

Have a nice day!

[frankrolf]

Thank you all for the encouraging comments and for even creating reference material! Since I am currently extending the Italics with Greek (see #37), I am assessing how much work needs to be done to make everything polytonic. I can’t promise a specific timeline, but I know that there is a need, and will therefore try to incorporate Polytonic Greek in one of the next releases.

[MaghSamana]

Hello,

Source Sans has incorporated polytonic greek. For Source Serif, is there any progress on that?

[ousia]

@frankrolf, incorporating polytonic Greek would be an excellent feature for Source Serif.

Congratulations and many thanks for your outstanding work.

[kaibernau]

Source Serif is a blessing and an important contemporary cornerstone in many regards. Its high versatility and design quality set an example of what should be, both by making a very complete high quality font family accessible, but also as a design and technical reference for type designers, both beginners and advanced.

Adding polytonic Greek to the design would add a new reference standard to benefit both these groups, in a niche area where not many good examples exist that are accessible, or open.

Thank you for your consideration Frank!