Evertype: Antinoou - A standard font for Coptic (original) (raw)

Antinoou is a multi-platform Coptic font which supports the full set of Coptic characters encoded in the UCS, with pre-composed combinations of glyphs and overlines, dots, and accents to ensure better printing. Some applications on some platforms may not make use of the OpenType and Apple Advanced Typography (AAT) tables. In addition to Coptic, the full set of Greek characters encoded in the UCS is supported in the font, as is a selection of Latin letters used in transliteration of Coptic, Greek, Egyptian, and Arabic. A fairly large set of editorial punctuation characters is also supported in Antinoou. Both roman and italic styles are available, the Latin characters being italic proper and the Greek and Coptic characters being oblique.

The current version of Antinoou is 1.0.6, dated 2012-09-12. The current version of the Mac Keyboard layouts is 2.1, dated 2014-09-01. For support, you may subscribe to the Antinoou discussion list.. Subscribers who apply for membership must use their real names. In addition, upon acceptance all subscribers will be asked to introduce themselves to the list with a few sentences describing their interest. You'll be moderated until you do this. This is designed to help minimize spam.

The beta version of Antinoou was called Keft. It was decided to change the name of the font to something that, being at the beginning of the alphabet, would load before other fonts, as many of those contain only the few Coptic characters encoded in the Greek block of the UCS. Antinoou is also known as Antinopolis.

A bit of history. I first began working on the disunification of Coptic characters from Greek characters in 1997 in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 document N1658. Kamal Mansour and I continued this work with another contribution in 2002, N2444. Stephen Emmel of the International Association for Coptic Studies (IACS) and I began working on a formal proposal in August 2003, N2611, followed up in October with a revised proposal, N2636. The character set proposed in N2636 was accepted for internatinal ballot, and in April 2004, Stephen and I, having worked together in Münster earlier that year, presented N2744, which revised the code table and added many characters for early Coptic. In summer 2004 the IACS decided to commission a Sahidic Coptic font from me; in January 2007 I was able to spend a week in Münster at the Institut für Ägyptologie und Koptologie an der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster, where Stephen and I set to work on designing and producing the font. We discovered shortcomings in the character set that prevented implementation and successfully addressed these in our May 2007 proposal, N3222. In October 2007, Stephen visited me in Lecanvey for a week and we worked to finalize the font. Preliminary beta-testing began 2007-10-07. In December 2009, Stephen visited me in Lecanvey for the Christmas holidays and we worked to make a number of changes to the font. The final beta-testing began 2010-01-08. Antinoou version 1.0 was released on 2010-08-08. —Michael Everson

Install and use the Antinoou Coptic font

Installing a Coptic font on the Mac OS

  1. Download the font “Antinoou” and unzip the .ttf file. (Two files, one roman and one italic, are inside the folder “AntinoouFont”, which is compressed in .zip format.)
  2. Installing the font is easy. Either drag the font to ~/Library/Fonts or double-click on the font and let FontBook do the installing.
  3. Archive or delete the .zip file as you wish.

Installing a Coptic font on Windows XP

  1. Download the font “Antinoou” and unzip the .ttf file. (Two files, one roman and one italic, are inside the folder “AntinoouFont”, which is compressed in .zip format.)
  2. Go to the Start > Control Panels > Fonts.
  3. Go to File > “Install New Font…” and install the font from the place you unzipped the .ttf file.
  4. Archive or delete the .zip file as you wish.

Installing a Coptic font on Ubuntu Linux

If necessary, download and install Ubuntu Linux. I used version 10.04 Desktop Edition. (If you are using Parallels on the Mac OS you may need these instructions, which are for a 2007 version of Ubuntu but that’s OK.)

  1. Download the font “Antinoou” and unzip the .ttf file onto the Desktop. (Two files, one roman and one italic, are inside the folder “AntinoouFont”, which is compressed in .zip format.)
  2. Go to Places > Home Folder to open the File Browser.
  3. Go to Go > Location...
  4. In the “Location:” box, type “fonts:///” and press Return.
  5. Drag the unzipped .ttf file into the Fonts directory. (It will copy there; the original will be left on your Desktop.)
  6. Archive or delete the .zip file and .ttf file on the Desktop as you wish.

Install and use a Coptic keyboard layout

Two QWERTY-based keyboard layouts, which are optimized for English-language typists, and are currently available. One of them, “Coptic - English”, is based on an English-specific transliteration and is probably going to be most popular with English-speaking Copticists. The other, “Coptic - Greek”, is based on Apple's Greek keyboard layout, useful for people who type a lot of Greek and a little Coptic.

Two other transliteration-based keyboards are also available. One is a QWERTZ-based keyboard layout, “Coptic - German”, which is optimized for German-speaking typists, and the other is an AZERTY-based keyboard layout, “Coptic - French”, which is optimized for French-speaking typists. You can download a .zip file containing PDF descriptions of these Coptic keyboard layouts.

Installing a Coptic keyboard layout on the Mac OS

  1. Download the Mac OS Coptic keyboard layout package. (The files are inside the folder “Coptic-Mac-Keylayouts”, which is compressed in .zip format.)
  2. Install the keyboard layout by dragging them (the .keylayout and the .icns files, not their enclosing folder) to ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts.
  3. To use a keyboard layout, activate it at System Preferences > International > Input Menu.

Installing a Keyman Coptic keyboard layout on Windows XP

The Coptic QWERTY keyboard, which is optimized for English-language typists, is available in Tavultesoft Keyman format. First you must install Keyman Desktop. Then you will be ready to install a keyboard layout.

  1. Download the Keyman Coptic keyboard layout package and unzip it. Only the English and Greek keyboard layouts have been prepared as of 2010-08-28.
  2. Double-click on the coptic.kmp file to install it into Keyman. So far it all works fine except for the compendia and cryptogram deadkeys.

Installing an MSKLC Coptic keyboard layout on Windows XP

The Coptic QWERTY keyboard, which is optimized for English-language typists, is available in Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC) format. I am not sure about all the instructions for installing and using this.

  1. Download the Keyman Coptic keyboard layout package and unzip it. The MSKLC keyboard layouts have not been updated as of 2010-08-28.
  2. Double-click on the Coptic_i386.msi file to install it. (This one installed into XP for me.) I am not sure then what else you do... but as far as I can tell this keyboard layout has been configured correctly.

Installing a Coptic keyboard layout on Ubuntu Linux

Keyman source files work on Linux, using the “kmfl” tool. First you must install this tool. To do this:

  1. Go to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager.
  2. Select Settings > Repositories.
  3. Click on “Third Party Software”.
  4. Click “Add...”.
  5. Type: deb http://packages.sil.org/ubuntu feisty main
  6. Click “OK”, then click “Close”.
  7. Click the “Reload” button.
  8. Scroll down and select ”scim-kmfl-imengine”.
  9. Click “Apply” to install the “kmfl” tool. (You may have to log out and log in again after this step.) Now you are ready to install a keyboard layout.
  10. Download the Ubuntu Coptic keyboard layout package.
  11. Go to System > Preferences > SCIM Input Method Setup.
  12. Go to IMEngine > KMFL.
  13. Click “Install”.
  14. Navigate to the coptic.kmn file and click OK. You may wish to install SIL Graphite into Ubuntu. To do this:
  15. Go to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager.
  16. Select “pango-graphite”.
  17. Click “Apply”.

Test your Coptic font

Here is a page containing Coptic text.

[Coptic]

The development work for the design of the Coptic font “Antinoou” was supported by the International Association for Coptic Studies.

The development work for the AAT enabling of the Coptic font “Antinoou” was supported by Apple Computer, Inc..

This Coptic font “Antinoou” was developed using Fontographer and FontLab Studio.