The Cardo Font
NEWS ABOUT CARDO
5/25/10 version
.99 of Cardo is posted. This is mainly
an update for the license information, as explained on the main page of this
site, although a couple of small items are also fixed. The manual is still at version .98; ignore
the license information contained in it.
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.
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:
See below for a
complete update history.
COVERAGE
The following
Unicode ranges are included (complete coverage unless otherwise noted):
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):
IN THE PIPELINE
Characters
planned for future releases of Cardo include the following:
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).
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
Cardo has now been released under the SIL
Open Font License, version 1.1. The text
of the license appears below; click the graphic at the left for additional
information about this license.
Copyright (c) 2004–2010,
David J. Perry, with Reserved Font Name Cardo.
This Font
Software is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1.
This license is
copied below, and is also available with a FAQ at: http://scripts.sil.org/OFL
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
SIL
OPEN FONT LICENSE Version 1.1 - 26 February 2007
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREAMBLE
The
goals of the Open Font License (OFL) are to stimulate worldwide development of
collaborative font projects, to support the font creation efforts of academic
and linguistic communities, and to provide a free and open framework in which
fonts may be shared and improved in partnership with others.
The
OFL allows the licensed fonts to be used, studied, modified and redistributed
freely as long as they are not sold by themselves. The fonts, including any
derivative works, can be bundled, embedded, redistributed and/or sold with any
software provided that any reserved names are not used by derivative works. The
fonts and derivatives, however, cannot be released under any other type of
license. The requirement for fonts to remain under this license does not apply to
any document created using the fonts or their derivatives.
DEFINITIONS
"Font
Software" refers to the set of files released by the Copyright Holder(s)
under this license and clearly marked as such. This may include source files,
build scripts and documentation.
"Reserved
Font Name" refers to any names specified as such after the copyright
statement(s).
"Original
Version" refers to the collection of Font Software components as distributed
by the Copyright Holder(s).
"Modified
Version" refers to any derivative made by adding to, deleting, or
substituting -- in part or in whole -- any of the components of the Original
Version, by changing formats or by porting the Font Software to a new
environment.
"Author"
refers to any designer, engineer, programmer, technical writer or other person
who contributed to the Font Software.
PERMISSION
& CONDITIONS
Permission
is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of the Font
Software, to use, study, copy, merge, embed, modify, redistribute, and sell
modified and unmodified copies of the Font Software, subject to the following
conditions:
1)
Neither the Font Software nor any of its individual components, in Original or
Modified Versions, may be sold by itself.
2)
Original or Modified Versions of the Font Software may be bundled, redistributed
and/or sold with any software, provided that each copy contains the above
copyright notice and this license. These can be included either as stand-alone
text files, human-readable headers or in the appropriate machine-readable
metadata fields within text or binary files as long as those fields can be
easily viewed by the user.
3)
No Modified Version of the Font Software may use the Reserved Font Name(s)
unless explicit written permission is granted by the corresponding Copyright
Holder. This restriction only applies to the primary font name as presented to
the users.
4)
The name(s) of the Copyright Holder(s) or the Author(s) of the Font Software
shall not be used to promote, endorse or advertise any Modified Version, except
to acknowledge the contribution(s) of the Copyright Holder(s) and the Author(s)
or with their explicit written permission.
5)
The Font Software, modified or unmodified, in part or in whole, must be distributed
entirely under this license, and must not be distributed under any other
license. The requirement for fonts to remain under this license does not apply
to any document created using the Font Software.
TERMINATION
This
license becomes null and void if any of the above conditions are not met.
DISCLAIMER
THE
FONT SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT, PATENT,
TRADEMARK, OR OTHER RIGHT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER BE LIABLE FOR
ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL,
INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF
CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE
THE FONT SOFTWARE OR FROM OTHER DEALINGS IN THE FONT SOFTWARE.
The file cardo99.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: cardo98.zip, 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
5/25/10 version
.99 of Cardo posted
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