The Cardo Font

NEWS ABOUT CARDO

11/02/04 version .98 of Cardo has been released! This is a major upgrade, over two years in the making, with over 1,400 new characters. The most significant additions are all the Greek characters proposed for Unicode by the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae and the characters recommended by the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative. For the first time Cardo contains characters beyond the Basic Multilingual Plane of Unicode and provides OpenType tables to access alternate glyphs. See below for complete details about what has been added or improved in this release. Also, from now on, the manual will be available only in PDF (Adobe Acrobat) format; there used to be a Word version as well, but it’s better to standardize on one cross-platform format. There are also new test documents for users of Adobe InDesign and Mellel.

Version .98 is a very advanced beta version. In recognition of the length of time that Cardo has been in development and of the significant additions made to this version, I have decided that it is time for an official release. Given the large number of new characters and other changes between .98 and earlier versions, it’s inevitable that there are some glitches. Please download and test version .98 and send me any corrections or suggestions by January 31, 2005 (my email address is here). In February I will fix any problems that have surfaced and then release version 1.0.

Once version 1.0 is out the door, I plan to return to work on the italic version of Cardo that was shelved while 1.0 was being finished.

Note: links to download the font are found at the bottom of this page, as is a more detailed update history.

GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT CARDO

Cardo is a large Unicode font specifically designed for the needs of classicists, Biblical scholars, medievalists, and linguists. Since it may be used to prepare materials for publication, it also contains features that are required for high-quality typography, such as ligatures, text figures (also known as old style numerals), true small capitals and a variety of punctuation and space characters. It may also be used to document and discuss the features of Unicode that are applicable to the these disciplines, as we work to help colleagues understand the value (and limitations) of Unicode.

Cardo is freely available (subject to the terms of use below). I do have one request: if you find Cardo useful, or if you have suggestions for improvement, please email me and tell me about what you are doing with the font. Knowing that people are using Cardo makes the time and effort I put into it worthwhile.

ORIGIN & DESIGN

This font is my version of a typeface cut for the Renaissance printer Aldus Manutius and first used to print Pietro Bembo’s book De Aetna. This font has been revived in modern times under several names (Bembo, Aetna, Aldine 401). I chose it mainly because it is a classic book face, suitable for scholarship, and also because it is easier to get various diacritics sized and positioned for legibility with this design than with some others. I added a set of Greek characters designed to harmonize well on the page with the Roman letters as well as many other characters useful to scholars. The Hebrew characters are designed to match those used in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia as closely as possible and so have no claim to originality.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

This is a large Unicode font.

For Windows, you need at least Windows 95 and a word processor that can handle Unicode-based documents: either Microsoft Word 97 or more recent, or OpenOffice 1.0 or greater. (For more information about OpenOffice, a full-featured, open-source suite comparable to Microsoft Office that is attacting considerable interest these days, click this link; note however that Open Office does not yet handle characters in the supplementary planes.) You will also need a way to enter the Unicode characters; either Word’s Insert/Symbol, a Unicode editor such as UniPad (plain text only), or my own keyboard utility. If you want to use Hebrew in true right-to-left fashion, you must have Word 2000 or XP running under Windows 2000 or XP; OpenOffice does not yet handle right-to-left scripts.

On the Mac, you need OS X plus a Unicode-aware editor or keyboard utility. Mac Word 2004 handles Unicode well; Word 2001 and Office X do not. OpenOffice for OS X works well with Unicode, although it does not yet have the standard Mac interface; you need to use the X11 windowing system. Mellel, a word processor for OS 10.2 or later, is very affordable and handles Unicode and RTL text nicely; it is also the first Mac word processor to support OpenType features. Nisus has developed a new version of Writer, claimed to be Unicode-capable, but I have not tried it yet. You can also use Apple’s TextEdit (installed as part of a default OS X installation). If you are using an editor or word processor that is designed for Unicode, you can use the Unicode Hex entry method or the Extended Roman keyboard.

For Unix/Linux systems: Cardo has been extensively tested on Mandrake 10.1 (with the 2.6.9 kernel and Kde 2.3.2). I have also had some other reports of success on Linux but do not have details.

If you are not clear about what all this means, see my booklet about word processing issues for scholars, which provides a good introduction to Unicode and other font issues.

FEATURES OF THE CURRENT RELEASE

Cardo is still a work in progress; there are a number of characters I want to add, and there are undoubtedly bugs that will surface. Previous versions were described as beta releases, which lead some people to think that Cardo was not a good, usable font. Therefore, in recognition of the large number of new characters and the length of time that Cardo has been in development, I have decided to call the current release version 1.0.

Compared to the previous release (.71), version .98 has the following new characters:

• all the Greek characters proposed for Unicode by the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae: metrical symbols, acrophonic numerals, editorial signs and punctuation, musical characters, along with glyph variants of these characters
• a very large number of glyph variants of Greek capitals; these will be of particular interest to epigraphers and numismatists
• all the characters found in the TLG database that are so rare that they were not proposed for Unicode; it should be possible to represent any TLG text using this version of Cardo. These rare characters in the Supplemental Private Use Area-A.
• all the characters contained in the recommendation of the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative, version 1.0 (mostly in the Private Use Area)
• the Old Italic block of Unicode (no glyph variants yet; scheduled for next release)
• miscellaneous characters: Lunate Sigma, Sho/sho, and San/san (all part of Unicode 4.0) and some additional Greek precomposed characters in the Private Use Area; some new IPA characters such as click symbols, arrows, and length marks, plus the entire Spacing Modifier Letters range; the medievalist diacritic marks missing from version .71 have been added
• a set of true small capitals has been created, which is a real enhancement for those who care about quality typography.
• OpenType tables to access glyph variants have been created. As of October 2004 only InDesign and other products from Adobe Systems plus Mellel can take advantage of these features. See the Cardo manual for more details. This is an exciting development that will become even more important with the release of the next version of Windows (referred to as Longhorn, scheduled for 2006). Longhorn will support OT features at the system level.
• numerous small improvements and corrections.

See below for a complete update history.

COVERAGE

The following Unicode ranges are included (complete coverage unless otherwise noted):

• Basic Latin
• Latin-1 Supplement
• Latin Extended-A
• Latin Extended-B (selected characters for European languages)
• IPA Extensions
• Spacing Modifier Letters
• Combining Diacritical Marks
• General Punctuation (selected characters)
• Latin Extended Additional (selected characters)
• Greek and Coptic
• Greek Extended
• Hebrew
• Alphabetic Presentation Forms (Armenian characters omitted)
• Miscellaneous Technical (selection including metrical characters)
• Supplemental Punctuation (New Testament critical signs, ancient editorial signs, etc.)
• Miscellaneous Symbols (signs of the zodiac etc.)
• Old Italic
• Ancient Greek Numbers
• Ancient Greek Musical Notation

There are also many additional Unicode characters that are useful for scholars, such as double brackets, angle brackets, etc. that come from different areas of Unicode.

Cardo also contains the following glyphs in the Private Use Area (i.e., they are not a part of the Unicode standard but may be useful to scholars or to those who want high-quality typography):

• text figures (also known as old-style numerals)
• a complete set of true small capitals
• additional Latin ligatures (Th, ct, several with long s)
• additional ancient Greek symbols and characters

IN THE PIPELINE

Characters planned for future releases of Cardo include the following:

• characters added to the Spacing Modifier Letters block in the Unicode 4.0
• the Phonetic Extensions block added to Unicode 4.0 (I’m not sure about this; if anybody thinks it would be useful, please let me know)
• the remainder of the Runic block (those required by MUFI 1.0 are already done)
• glyph variants for the Old Italic characters
• Gothic (if there is a demand for it)
• updates to the Coptic characters, once a new proposal for Coptic is approved by Unicode (maybe; this will be a large undertaking)

LIMITATIONS

Cardo is still a work in progress. The character design and repertoire are not absolutely final. Please send me any comments that you have so that I can improve future versions. Also, I have not yet done hand hinting of the characters. This means that on most systems the characters will print better than they will look on the screen. On screen at text sizes some stems will look uneven and so forth. A future release will have better hinting.

On rare occasions in Hebrew one needs to use two cantillation marks over a single base character. As of August 2004, this is not possible in Windows; this is a problem with Windows, not with Cardo. Microsoft is aware of this and will fix the problem in a future release of Windows.

Word 2000 running under Win2000 does not like the Hebrew characters in Cardo .56. If you try to use them it substitutes Times New Roman. I don’t know why; they work fine in WordPad under Win2000 as well as in Word XP with either WordPad or Word 2002 (aka Word XP). Adobe InDesign Middle Eastern version on Mac OS X does not like Cardo at all (western versions are OK).

CARDO ON MAC OS 8 AND 9

In response to some requests, I made a version of Cardo for Mac OS 8/9. It never worked very well and as of April 2003 it is no longer available. The unfortunate truth is that Unicode support under pre-OS X systems is tricky and not terribly useful in any case since there are very few applications that support it. My limited time is better used to support newer systems on which Cardo can work well and to add the many characters that are in the pipeline.

TERMS OF USE

This font is free for personal, non-commercial, or non-profit use. It may also be used to prepare camera-ready copy for papers that will appear in academic journals, even if the author of the paper receives remuneration for article. Any other commercial use (including the printing of books to be sold at a profit) requires the purchase of an appropriate license. Individuals may give copies to others, as long as all files from the original zip archive are kept together and none is altered. This software may not be posted on any web page, included in any compilation, or sold in any form without the express permission of David J. Perry. Those who wish to promote the use of this font are encouraged to put a link to my home page http://scholarsfonts.net on their web sites so that others may download it.

While Cardo is a standard TrueType font and should not cause problems on your computer, under no circumstances will David Perry be liable for any problems that you encounter in using the font or for any loss or damage that results from its use. Use the font at your own risk. Downloading and installing the font indicates your acceptance of these terms.

HOW TO DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL

The file cardo98.zip contains the Windows/OS X TrueType font plus a readme file with installation instructions. It also contains a user’s manual in PDF format. The manual gives additional information about the design of the font and will let you view all the characters included in the font after you install it in your system. On my Windows system, the manual looks much better with Adobe Reader 6 (fonts are noticeably smoother), although it is entirely legible under Reader 5. Go to this page to update your version of Adobe Reader. For those who may want them for some reason, I have left the earlier versions here: cardo71.zip and cardo56.zip .

For those who want to test the OpenType features such as stylistic alternates, there are two test documents available to download: an Adobe InDesign file (zipped) and a Mellel file (binhex). The InDesign file requires InDesign 2.0 or later. (It does not work with the Middle Eastern Mac InDesign.) For Mellel, you need 1.8.1 or more recent.

Downloading and installing the font indicates your acceptance of the terms of use, which are given above as well as in the user’s manual. Right-click on a blue link in the previous paragraphs and save the zip file to your computer. Open it with any of the usual unzip utilities and install the font as you would any TrueType font. See the readme file if you aren’t sure how to install fonts.

Note to Mac folks: recent versions of StuffIt Expander can open .zip files as well as .sit files, so try just downloading from the link above. If anybody really needs a .sit archive, email me and I will post one.

UPDATE HISTORY

11/06/04 version .98 of Cardo posted; see above for list of new features.

4/5/03 Mac OS 8/9 version no longer available

11/18/02 an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) version of the Cardo manual is now available. This will be particularly useful for Mac and Linux users, or Windows users who don’t have Microsoft Word.

8/27/02 version .71 of Cardo posted. This adds the complete block of Unicode combining marks to the Windows/OS X version (only selected marks were found in previous versions). Cardo now includes OpenType support for Hebrew.

8/23/02 Mac OS 8/9 version of Cardo posted

8/20/02: version .70 posted. This is a minor upgrade that adds a few Unicode space and formatting characters and fixes one bug in the Hebrew OT tables.

8/13/02: version .59 which fixed a bug in v. 58 and which may provide better-looking outlines on some systems. In terms of characters and features, this is the same as version .58.

7/28/02: an italic version of Cardo is in the works! Several users have asked for this. It will make Cardo much more useful for academics, who require italic for book titles and so forth.

7/28/02: first version (.58) with OpenType support for Hebrew and OpenType tables for advanced Latin typography

4/26/02: first version of Cardo (.56) that includes Hebrew characters posted

Last updated November 18, 2004

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