Charis SIL - Version History

9 Feb 2022 (SIL WSTech Team) Charis SIL version 6.101

This is a maintenance release primarily focused on making the v6 fonts available on TypeTuner Web.

New

The fonts now support SIL TypeTuner. Customized fonts can be created at TypeTuner Web (https://scripts.sil.org/ttw/fonts2go.cgi)
New locl OpenType feature that supports Macedonian (MKD/mk) Cyrillic alternates
Serbian and Macedonian alternates are also available through a new OpenType feature (cv84) for applications that do not support language-specific locl features
Characters have been added to support Unicode versions up to 14.0.0 (more to be added in future releases):
- U+A7C4 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C WITH PALATAL HOOK
- U+A7C5 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER S WITH HOOK
- U+1DF00 LATIN SMALL LETTER FENG DIGRAPH WITH TRILL
- U+1DF01 LATIN SMALL LETTER REVERSED SCRIPT G
- U+1DF02 LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL TURNED G
- U+1DF03 LATIN SMALL LETTER REVERSED K
- U+1DF05 LATIN SMALL LETTER LEZH WITH RETROFLEX HOOK
- U+1DF07 LATIN SMALL LETTER REVERSED ENG
- U+1DF09 LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH HOOK AND RETROFLEX HOOK
- U+1DF0A LATIN LETTER RETROFLEX CLICK WITH RETROFLEX HOOK
- U+1DF0B LATIN SMALL LETTER ESH WITH DOUBLE BAR
- U+1DF0C LATIN SMALL LETTER ESH WITH DOUBLE BAR AND CURL
- U+1DF0D LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED T WITH CURL
- U+1DF0E LATIN LETTER INVERTED GLOTTAL STOP WITH CURL
- U+1DF0F LATIN LETTER STRETCHED C WITH CURL
- U+1DF10 LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL TURNED K
- U+1DF11 LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH FISHHOOK
- U+1DF12 LATIN SMALL LETTER DEZH DIGRAPH WITH PALATAL HOOK
- U+1DF13 LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH BELT AND PALATAL HOOK
- U+1DF14 LATIN SMALL LETTER ENG WITH PALATAL HOOK
- U+1DF15 LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED R WITH PALATAL HOOK
- U+1DF16 LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITH FISHHOOK AND PALATAL HOOK
- U+1DF17 LATIN SMALL LETTER TESH DIGRAPH WITH PALATAL HOOK
- U+1DF19 LATIN SMALL LETTER DEZH DIGRAPH WITH RETROFLEX HOOK
- U+1DF1A LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH STROKE AND RETROFLEX HOOK
- U+1DF1B LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH RETROFLEX HOOK
- U+1DF1C LATIN SMALL LETTER TESH DIGRAPH WITH RETROFLEX HOOK
- U+1DF1D LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH RETROFLEX HOOK
- U+1DF1E LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH CURL

Improved

The special-purpose modified fonts have been updated to be based on the current version. These are available at https://software.sil.org/lcgfonts/download/ and include Literacy and Compact versions.
U+02DE MODIFIER LETTER RHOTIC HOOK position improved with modifier vowels:
- U+02B8 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL Y
- U+1D53 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL OPEN O
- U+1D5A MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED M
- U+1DBA MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED V
Design improved for these characters:
- U+0184 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER TONE SIX
- U+0185 LATIN SMALL LETTER TONE SIX
The small caps feature (smcp) now supports more characters
The spacing of Serbian italic alternates has been improved

Changed encoding

The following characters were in the SIL PUA but have now been given Unicode assignments. The SIL PUA characters are now deprecated:
- U+A7C6 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z WITH PALATAL HOOK (was U+F234)
- U+10783 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL AE (was U+F1A1)
- U+1078F MODIFIER LETTER SMALL CLOSED REVERSED OPEN E (was U+F1A4)
- U+10791 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL RAMS HORN (was U+F1B5)
- U+10795 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL H WITH STROKE (was U+F1BC)
- U+107A0 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED Y (was U+F1CE)
- U+107A2 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL O WITH STROKE (was U+F1AB)
- U+107A3 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL CAPITAL OE (was U+F1AE)
- U+107B2 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL CAPITAL Y (was U+F1B4)
- U+1088E NABATAEAN LETTER FINAL KAPH (was U+F1A3)
- U+1DF04 LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL L WITH BELT (was U+F268)
- U+1DF06 LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED Y WITH BELT (was U+F267)
- U+1DF08 LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED R WITH LONG LEG AND RETROFLEX HOOK (was U+F269)
- U+1DF18 LATIN SMALL LETTER EZH WITH PALATAL HOOK (was U+F235)

2 July 2021 (SIL WSTech Team) Charis SIL version 6.001

Reverted font Postscript name to that used in v5 and earlier to avoid problems with unrecognized fonts when opening older documents.

29 Jun 2021 (SIL WSTech Team) Charis SIL version 6.000

Note that this is a major upgrade that may cause document reflow as some glyphs widths have changed and some features have been removed.

Removed

Removed DSIGs added in version 5.000. These have now been removed to reflect current best practice font development guidance. Adobe InDesign will complain that fonts cannot be found if a document last saved with version 5.000 is opened with version 5.960 or later installed. It will be necessary to find/replace the fonts in the document using the command in the Type menu. Please also look over the document carefully to note any places where changes in the fonts have affected letterforms or spacing.
Graphite has been removed. Application and OS support for OpenType has greatly improved, so the need for Graphite in this font family is greatly reduced. If this affects you, and you find that OpenType does not provide sufficient support for your needs, please contact us right away.
Removed the Show Invisibles feature.
Removed support for nine-level pitch contours. These will be replaced by a standalone pitch contours font in the future.

Added

Characters added to support Unicode versions 7.0-13.0, including feature support (e.g. small caps) where appropriate:

U+03D1 GREEK THETA SYMBOL
U+03F4 GREEK CAPITAL THETA SYMBOL
U+1AB0 COMBINING DOUBLED CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT
U+1AB1 COMBINING DIAERESIS-RING
U+1AB2 COMBINING INFINITY
U+1AB3 COMBINING DOWNWARDS ARROW
U+1AB4 COMBINING TRIPLE DOT
U+1AB5 COMBINING X-X BELOW
U+1AB6 COMBINING WIGGLY LINE BELOW
U+1AB7 COMBINING OPEN MARK BELOW
U+1AB8 COMBINING DOUBLE OPEN MARK BELOW
U+1AB9 COMBINING LIGHT CENTRALIZATION STROKE BELOW
U+1ABA COMBINING STRONG CENTRALIZATION STROKE BELOW
U+1DF5 COMBINING UP TACK ABOVE
U+203B REFERENCE MARK
U+20BE LARI SIGN
U+20BF BITCOIN SIGN
U+27E8 MATHEMATICAL LEFT ANGLE BRACKET
U+27E9 MATHEMATICAL RIGHT ANGLE BRACKET
U+2E13 DOTTED OBELOS
U+2E14 DOWNWARDS ANCORA
U+2E17 DOUBLE OBLIQUE HYPHEN
U+2E22 TOP LEFT HALF BRACKET
U+2E23 TOP RIGHT HALF BRACKET
U+2E24 BOTTOM LEFT HALF BRACKET
U+2E25 BOTTOM RIGHT HALF BRACKET
U+A78F LATIN LETTER SINOLOGICAL DOT
U+A7AE LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SMALL CAPITAL I
U+A7AF LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL Q
U+A7B3 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER CHI
U+A7B4 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER BETA
U+A7B5 LATIN SMALL LETTER BETA
U+A7B6 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA
U+A7B7 LATIN SMALL LETTER OMEGA
U+A7B8 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH STROKE
U+A7B9 LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH STROKE
U+AB30 LATIN SMALL LETTER BARRED ALPHA
U+AB53 LATIN SMALL LETTER CHI
U+AB5C MODIFIER LETTER SMALL HENG
U+AB5E MODIFIER LETTER SMALL L WITH MIDDLE TILDE
U+F26E CAPITAL RAMS HORN (in SIL PUA)

New

First release that uses a UFO-based design and production workflow
- All sources are in open formats
- Build toolkit and workflow is completely open-source
- See https://silnrsi.github.io/silfontdev/en-US/Introduction.html
Web fonts are provided in both WOFF and WOFF2 formats
Applied new hinting techniques to try to improve screen rendering on Windows
All-new documentation in HTML and PDF formats
Features for controlling literacy forms of a and g separately
- Literacy a alternates (ss02)
- Literacy g alternates (ss03)
Feature to support side-by-side rendering of U+0300 plus U+0301
- Kayan diacritics (cv79)
Tone letter features (cv91 & cv92) now supported through OpenType

Fixes

Width of typographic spaces have been made more consistent to reflect common publishing industry usage. Note that this may affect line and page lengths. Affected spaces:
- U+2000 EN QUAD (made width consistent)
- U+2001 EM QUAD (made width consistent)
- U+2007 FIGURE SPACE (made wider to match numerals in all styles)
- U+2009 THIN SPACE (made narrower)
- U+202F NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE (made narrower)
Fixed some small capital correspondences, including added support for clicks
Fixed problems with spacing of tone letters
Fixed missing or distorted Vietnamese composite glyphs
Fixed miscellaneous distorted glyphs
Improved miscellaneous anchor positions, including the position of diacritics below glyphs with macrons below (e.g. U+1E0F LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH LINE BELOW)
Improved position of diacritics for superscripts and modifier letters (including cedilla, ogonek, rhotic hook)
Fixes and improvements to various glyphs:
- U+0037 DIGIT SEVEN (spacing)
- U+01E5 LATIN SMALL LETTER G WITH STROKE (bar position on single-story variant)
- U+02D6 MODIFIER LETTER PLUS SIGN (size)
- U+02DF MODIFIER LETTER CROSS ACCENT (size)
- U+02E4 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL REVERSED GLOTTAL STOP (form)
- U+033B COMBINING SQUARE BELOW (more rectangular)
- U+1AB3 COMBINING DOWNWARDS ARROW (position fixes since beta 1)
- U+1D02 LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED AE (made double-story in italic)
- U+1D15 LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL OU (form)
- U+1D46 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED AE (made double-story in italic)
- U+1D77 LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED G (position)
- U+1D78 MODIFIER LETTER CYRILLIC EN (form)
- U+1EFC LATIN CAPITAL LETTER MIDDLE-WELSH V
- U+A76A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ET
- U+A76B LATIN SMALL LETTER ET
- U+A76C LATIN CAPITAL LETTER IS
- U+A76D LATIN SMALL LETTER IS
- U+A77F LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED INSULAR G (position)
- U+A7F8 MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL H WITH STROKE (form)
- U+A7FA LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL TURNED M (italic)

Known issues

There is no support for TypeTuner or TypeTuner Web. We hope to add that support soon.
There are no regional subsets. Please contact us if these are a priority for you and describe how you use them. We are reassessing whether to provide these subsets. With current web technology and WOFF2 compression most uses can be met equally well with the full fonts.

27 Oct 2014 (SIL NRSI team) Charis SIL version 5.000

Added Stylistic Sets to the font for OpenType support of previously Graphite-only features
Added Character Variants to the font for OpenType support of previously Graphite-only features
Added Serbian feature when Serbian language is turned on
Added hook D variant feature (for U+018A/U+0257)
Removed "Show deprecated PUA" feature
Removed "Romanian-style diacritics" feature (because glyphs are now encoded)
Removed "Diacritic selection" feature
Added U+039E, U+03BC, U+03C6 and U+03C9 in the Greek and Coptic block
Added U+0528..U+052F in the Cyrillic Supplement block
Added U+2041 in the General Punctuation block
Added U+2095..U+209C in the Superscripts and Subscripts block
Added U+20B6..U+20BD in the Currency Symbols block
Added U+210C, U+2113, U+2117, U+212D, U+2135, U+214F in the Letterlike Symbols block
Added U+2150..U+2152 and U+2189 in the Number Forms block
Added U+2226, U+2234..U+2235, U+2262, U+2282..U+2287 in the Mathematical Operators block
Added U+2640, U+2642, U+266D, U+266F in the Miscellaneous Symbols block
Added U+27E8..U+27E9 in the Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A block
Added U+2C7E..U+2C7F in the Latin Extended-C block
Added U+2C88 in the Coptic block
Added U+2E00..U+2E0D, U+2E3A..U+2E3B in the Supplemental Punctuation block
Added U+A736..U+A73F, U+A742..U+A74D, U+A750..U+A787, U+A790..U+A7AD, U+A7B0..U+A7B1, U+A7F7..U+A7FA in the Latin Extended-D block. These were also added to relevant features.
Added U+A92E in the Kayah Li block (to support the Kayah Li language when using the Roman script)
Added U+AB64..U+AB65 in the Latin Extended-E block
Added U+1D40C, U+1D504..U+1D505, U+1D50A, U+1D50E..U+1D50F, U+1D514, U+1D516..U+1D517, U+1D519 in the Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols block
Added PUA characters U+F26C (curl J) and U+F26D (left-hook b)
Characters in our PUA that were added to Unicode have had their codepoints updated: F1AD>A7F9, F266>A78E, F26B>A78D, F32C>0526, F32D>0527, F17B>1DFD, F209>2C70
These PUA characters were deprecated (now white on black glyphs): U+F17B, U+F1AD, U+F209, U+F247, U+F248, U+F266, U+F26B, U+F32C, U+F32D
Deleted U+0149 as it is officially deprecated in Unicode
Added support for shorter macrons under narrow letters (i,l,r,t). (This only works for Graphite or using precomposed characters in OpenType.)
Made it possible for saltillo characters (U+A78B and U+A78C) to "carry" diacritics
Improved design of U+A722..U+A725 and U+A78D
Refactored all cedilla positioning
Removal of unneeded duplicate glyphs (because of improvements in smart font code)
Bug fix in Graphite code to allow for simultaneous selection of Vietnamese alternates and Small Caps
Bug fix in Graphite code to allow for simultaneous selection of Ogonek alternates and Small Caps
Improved hinting
Significant size, position and metric changes made to Subscript and Superscript parentheses, plus, minus, equals.
Size of guillomets (U+00AB U+00BB U+2039 U+203A) modified to match the font. Metrics were not changed.
Arrowhead design of U+21A8 modified to match the other arrows
Placement of Ogonek revisited
Slight modification to positioning of U+0361 and U+035C in Italic and Bold Italic
Changed the strongly curved hooks on Cyrillic U+04C3..U+04C4, U+04C7..U+04C8, U+04FC..U+04FD, U+0512..U+0513 to be more consistent with other hooks
Modified Cyrillic italic versions of U+04AF, U+04B1, U+04B5, U+04BC, U+04BE, U+04D8
Modified design of U+A78D to be more curved and less squared
Changed postscript names for U+0218 and U+0219
Changed postscript names for U+2203, U+232A and U+2329
"Hide tone contour staves" feature now works with single tonebar
U+1DBF now follows weight and italic changes
Allowed combining marks to render properly with U+02D0
Removed AAT support

10 Jun 2013 (SIL NRSI team) Charis SIL version 4.114

optimized Graphite code for faster processing of plain ASCII text

1 Aug 2012 (SIL NRSI team) Charis SIL version 4.112

Changed Graphite feature identifiers from integers to 4-character alphanumeric tags (no other changes)

12 Sep 2011 (SIL NRSI team) Charis SIL version 4.110

Removed the VDMX table
Changed version number (using ttfsetver)

25 Aug 2011 (SIL NRSI team) Charis SIL version 4.108

Double-encoded the SIL PUA characters which were added to Unicode 5.2 and 6.0 (using ttfremap)
Encoded 1D29 (using ttfremap)
Corrected problem with coverage tables (using ttfsortcover)
Changed version number (using ttfsetver)
Added device metric tables
Added an empty dsig table

05 May 2009 (Alan Ward) Charis SIL version 4.106

TypeTuner (Silt) table changed so that line metrics from legacy fonts can be imported

20 Mar 2009 (SIL NRSI team) Charis SIL version 4.106

Added support for Unicode 5.1 Latin and Cyrillic additions
Other characters added: 0462, 0463, 0474, 0475, 0524, 0525, 20E5, 2203, 2204, 231C..U+231F, 2329, 232A, 239B..23AD, A722..U+A725
Added PUA characters F26B, F32C, F32D
Design changes: 002F, 00A1, 00BF, 02D0, 02ED, 02FF, 034B, 04A8, 04A9, 04BC, 04BD, 04BE, 04BF, 04E0, 04E1, 045F, 04AA, 04AB, F208, F209, 0358
Fixed attachment points on 1D68, 1D69, 1D6A, 04FA, 04FB, fi and fl ligatures
Fixed collision issues for Vietnamese glyphs 'with horn'
Fixed advance of t-caron
Feature modifications:
- new alternates added to feature ID 1033 and renamed from Small v-hook alternate to V-hook alternates
- new alternate U+2C65 LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH STROKE added to Literacy alternates feature
- default for Diacritic selection was changed from "on" to "off" (by request of FieldWorks team)
Added new features:
- Small Caps
- Non-European caron alternates
- Capital B-hook alternate
- Show deprecated PUA
Slant italic bug fixed (dot on i was not disappearing with combining marks)
Removal of about 700 unused glyphs (including precomposed chao tone letters which were no longer needed since these are now dynamically created)
Fixed issues: kern table error, usMaxContext and yMax errors
Several OpenType issues fixed
Graphite reordering bug fixed
Automated AAT build process
Changed OFL license to version 1.1

9 May 2008 (SIL NRSI team) Charis SIL version 4.104

Double-encoded the SIL PUA characters which were added to Unicode 5.1 (using ttfremap)
Changed version number (using ttfsetver)

16 Aug 2007 (SIL NRSI team) Charis SIL version 4.102

Modified the OpenType features so that InDesign's built-in small caps work

31 Jan 2007 (SIL NRSI team) Charis SIL version 4.100

Added PUA character F26A
Added 2308, 2309
Removed Cyrillic italic alternates feature and added those 3 characters to the slant italic specials feature
Fixed bug in nine-level tones (in PUA) feature
Made Chinantec tones larger, added 02C9 to this feature
Fixed bug in GSUB table to work in Pango

15 Dec 2006 (SIL NRSI team) Charis SIL version 4.0.04 beta 1 (Version 4.004)

Beta release (should not be distributed!)
Added support for Unicode 5 Latin and Cyrillic additions
Other new chars: 2053, 211F, 2123, 2423, FE20..FE23
Numerous new PUA characters
Deprecated some existing PUA chars now added to Unicode
New features:
- Open O alternate
- Chinantec tones
- Pitch contour tramlines
- Cyrillic italic alternates
Tone bars no longer limited to 3 sequences (OpenType)
Added glyphs for nine-level tones (in PUA)
Design changes to some Greek, Cyrillic, ogonek and modifier glyphs, particularly in italic faces

31 Jan 2006 (SIL NRSI team) Charis SIL version 4.0.02 (Version 4.002)

First version released under the SIL Open Font License