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<!DOCTYPE html SYSTEM "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
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<title>Athena Ruby Users Manual</title>
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<body><h1>Athena Ruby Users Manual</h1>
<div class="notice">
<p class="alert"><strong>Version 21 July 2015. This manual assumes of the reader <a
href="http://www.doaks.org/resources/publications/resources-for-authors-and-editors/guide-to-unicode-greek"
>basic knowledge of the Unicode standard as it applies to Unicode
Greek</a>.</strong></p>
</div>
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>Athena Ruby is a comprehensive OpenType font for the publication of scholarly editions of
Byzantine inscriptions. Named after a predecessor font, Athena, and Dumbarton Oaks
Publications Manager Glenn Ruby (d. 2004), Athena Ruby is designed to represent
Byzantine inscriptions in Latin and Greek. The character set includes letters, letter
variants, ligatures, and decoration found commonly in coins, seals, weights, and other
media, such as mosaics and frescoes. The glyphs are idealized replicas of letterforms
found in the geographical area of the Byzantine empire, from approximately 325 to 1453.
Designed as a Unicode-compliant OpenType font, Athena Ruby is suited to a broad range of
print and digital publications, from simple, single-author publications to complex
projects.</p>
<div><a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><img
alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0"
src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/3.0/88x31.png" /></a></div>
<p>Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C., holds all rights to
Athena Ruby and its documentation and tools, and makes the font available to the public for free under a <a
rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License</a>. We request that anyone using the
font in a publication, print or digital, formal or informal, include the following
acknowledgment (with the version number in parentheses, and if used in a digital
publication a link to the Dumbarton Oaks website):</p>
<blockquote>This publication uses the font Athena Ruby (ver. x.x), courtesy <a
href="http://www.doaks.org/">Dumbarton Oaks</a>, Trustees for Harvard University,
Washington, D.C.</blockquote>
<h2>Font Architecture</h2>
<h3>Glyphs</h3>
<p>The ca. 730 glyphs in Athena Ruby are intended to represent the major letterforms,
punctuation, symbols, and decorations found in Byzantine inscriptions. The font
incorporates glyphs that appeared in older, non-Unicode fonts developed by Dumbarton
Oaks from 1986 through 2008, and introduces other Byzantine-era glyphs well attested in
scholarly publications and from items from our collection. The characters were chosen
with special attention to the needs of sigillographers and numismatists. No claim is
made that the ensemble of characters is comprehensive, or that it reflects any scholar's
opinion about the date and appearance of the various glyphs.</p>
<p>Athena Ruby has the Latin and Greek alphabets (normal forms, variants, ligatures);
punctuation (modern and Byzantine); and symbols and decoration. To see a complete list
of the glyphs, consult the database (<a href="ARdatabase.html">HTML</a> | <a
href="AR.xml">XML</a>), which includes citations to published examples, or the <a
href="AR ensemble.pdf">pdf presenting the ensemble of characters</a>. </p>
<p>On the principle that minuscule letterforms would be anachronistic to its geographical,
chronological, and cultural scope, the font has only uncial letterforms, bound to both
upper- and lowercase keys. (This accords with the Unicode standard, which makes
normative statements only about the encoding of characters, not their appearance.)</p>
<p>The only non-Byzantine glyphs allowed in the font are modern punctation marks – | ,
. [ ] : · and the combining underdot. Athena Ruby has glyphs in the following tables (in
Unicode sequence): Basic Latin (61 points supported), Latin-1 Supplement (2 points),
Spacing Modifier Letters (4 points), Combining Diacritical Marks (11 points), Greek and
Coptic (49 points), Greek Extendend (167 points), General Punctuation (2 points), Number
Forms (1 points), Geometric Shapes (1 points), Miscellaneous Symbols (1 points),
Supplementary Punctuation (3 points), Ancient Greek Numbers (2 points). All other glyphs
reside in the Private Use Area (PUA). Some characters in the PUA may eventually become
candidates for standard points in Unicode. </p>
<p>Supported codepoints: U+0020-007C, 00A0, 00B7, 02C1, 02CA, 02CB, 02D9, 0300-03E1,
1F00-1FFE, 200C, 200D, 2180, 25CC, 2627, 2E09, 2E0A, 2E23, E100-E823, 10182, 10184</p>
<p>Athena Ruby does not support Greek characters that are not attested in Byzantine
inscriptions. Thus, for example, it is missing the digamma (U+03DC), sho (U+03F7), and
san (U+03FA). It also lacks the full set of ASCII characters.</p>
<h3>OpenType Features</h3>
<p>Athena Ruby is a True Type-flavor OpenType font. It utilizes several complex OpenType
features:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Character variants.</strong> Unicode can be thought of as a very long
two-dimensional table. (See our <a
href="http://www.doaks.org/resources/publications/resources-for-authors-and-editors/guide-to-unicode-greek"
>Guide to Unicode Greek</a> for basic background on Unicode.) Something like a
third dimension is made available by OpenType font technology, which allows type
designers to assign numerous glyphs to any single Unicode point. Athena Ruby employs
this technique for letters with historically attested variant representations. The
font has, for example, twenty-eight variants of the Greek alpha, each one bound to
the proper Unicode points (U+0391, U+03B1). Many software programs and contexts are
not designed to acess Unicode-compliant variants. To use the earlier analogy, they
access Unicode only as a two-dimensional space, and ignore the third dimension of
character variants. For those instances, the glyphs for character variants are also
bound to suitable places in the private use area (PUA).</li>
<li><strong>Contextual alternates.</strong> OpenType font technology allows for a glyph
to change its form depending upon the context. Athena Ruby uses this technology, but
only for overbars (U+0305), which change depending upon whether placed over a single
letter or a ligature. Not all software programs will take advantage of this
feature.</li>
<li><strong>Discretionary ligatures.</strong> OpenType technology allows several methods
of turning Unicode-compliant codepoints into ligatures. Athena Ruby uses
discretionary ligatures, which are not turned on by default. These are accessed or
permitted within application software. Note, too, that several of these ligatures
have variants. One of them (U+0305) also has contextual alternates.</li>
<li><strong>Stacking decorative elements in the PUA.</strong> Decorative elements in the
PUA in the range U+E700..E758 are assigned specialized GPOS kerning values to allow
the symbols to stack. To prevent nearby symbols from stacking, one may insert the
zero width non-joiner (ZWNJ; U+200C).</li>
</ul>
<p>To get the most out of Athena Ruby, you may need to choose a software program different
from the one you are accustomed to using. Or you may need to modify the way you use a
familiar program. To understand the limitations of specific software environments, and
for recommendations on best practices, please see below, Editing with Athena Ruby.</p>
<h2>Installation</h2>
<p><a href="fonts/AthenaRuby_b018.ttf.zip" target="blank">Download Athena Ruby</a>. Go to
the directory in which you saved the file and extract it. You do this usually by
double-clicking on the file, or right-clicking on it and choose "expand" or "unpack".
Find the newly unpacked font. The next step depends upon your operating system.</p>
<p class="pc">Right click on the font and select Install. Alternatively, find the drive
where you have your operating system installed and copy the file to
C:\windows\fonts.</p>
<p class="mac">Macintosh fonts are to be found in multiple directories, and many Mac users
manage their fonts with Fontbook (part of the OS) or a similar program. (Apple's website
provides a good expalantion on <a href="http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2435">how to
manage fonts on the Mac</a>.) Copy the uncompressed Athena Ruby file to the
directory of your choice, and use your preferred font management program to install the
font. If you don't know about font management programs, try double-clicking on the file
and then click "Install Font."</p>
<p>After Athena Ruby is installed, any open software programs will need to be restarted.</p>
<h2>Entering text</h2>
<p>To enter new text in Athena Ruby, use any of the methods below.</p>
<h3>Just Start Typing: Keyboard Drivers</h3>
<p>If you already know how to type in polytonic Greek, you are already set to use the font.
If you do not know how, you should install a keyboard driver. </p>
<p class="mac">The Macintosh OS (10.4 or later) includes a polytonic Greek keyboard driver.
Open <span class="instr">system preferences</span>, choose <span class="instr">language
& text</span>, then <span class="instr">input sources</span>. Choose <span
class="instr">Greek Polytonic</span>. While there, you should make sure to turn on
the <span class="instr">Keyboard & Character Viewer</span>, good ways to find
specific characters. Unfortunately, prior to OS 10.4 (Tiger), polytonic Greek was not
one of the options. For those on older versions of OS (and for those who run it, but are
unhappy with the configuration of its polytonic Greek keyboard), a third-party driver in
polytonic Greek should be installed. Try <a href="http://www.sourcecod.com/sophokeys"
>SophoKeys, a free keyboard driver</a>.</p>
<p class="pc">For Windows XP and Vista, there is a Polytonic Greek keyboard driver already
built into the operating system, but you must activate it. Microsoft has provided <a
href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/bb964651.aspx">very detailed
instructions with pictures here</a>. Unfortunately, this driver's assignment of
letters and diacriticals is difficult for many to memorize and use. Other Windows
keyboards are <a
href="http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pinax/greekkeys/technicalDetails.html#alternative"
>listed here</a>. Another alternative is <a
href="http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/multikey">MultiKey</a>, which is not a true
universal keyboard driver, since it works only for Microsoft Word and Classical Text
Editor.</p>
<h3>Pick and Choose: Character Finders and Palettes</h3>
<p>Athena Ruby straddles several code tables in the Unicode standard: Latin, Greek, Greek
Extended, Combining Diacritical Marks, and the Private Use Area. It will be helpful to
have on hand a good palette or finder, to help you explore the font and get the
characters you need. You will find this tool helpful even if you are accustomed to
typing with a keyboard driver. Warning: most character palettes access advanced glyphs
exclusively through the PUA. That is, you won't get Unicode-compliant text if you use
glyph finders to copy ligatures and variant letterforms. </p>
<p class="pc">Windows operating systems have a small but powerful program called Character
Map, which allows you to look through the contents of a font and copy the characters you
want. Click the start or windows button, click <span class="instr">All Programs</span>
then <span class="instr">xxx</span> then <span class="instr">yyy</span>. A similar but
more powerful program is <a href="http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Software/BabelMap.html"
>Babel Map</a>.</p>
<p class="mac">For OS 10.1-10.6 (for 10.7 and above see below), Mac's <span class="instr"
>Character Viewer</span> and <span class="instr">Keyboard Viewer</span> are your
best resources for navigating fonts. If you have a flag in the upper right corner of
your screen, click on it and look for the viewers. If neither program is shown as an
option, select <span class="instr">Open Language and Text...</span> and turn the viewers
on. Or if you don't see a flag, open <span class="instr">system preferences</span>,
choose <span class="instr">language & text</span>, then <span class="instr">input
sources</span>. The Character Viewer is powerful, and many of its best features are
found only after use. Try choosing different items in the <span class="instr"
>View</span> dropdown menu. Click some of the buttons that appear just below the
<span class="instr">View</span> dropdown. Click the triangles beside <span
class="instr">Character Info</span> and <span class="instr">Font Variation</span>.
The <span class="instr">Character Viewer</span> for OS 10.7 and beyond is of little use
in finding glyphs specific to Athena Ruby. You will need to use a third-party
application, such as <a href="http://www.fontexplorerx.com/">Linotype Fontexplorer</a>
or <a href="http://www.ergonis.com/products/popcharx/">PopChar X</a>. Also see
below.</p>
<p>Because the glyphs cover such a wide number of tables, quite separate from each other in
the Unicode standard, a generic palette or glyph finder can be awkward to use. Users may
find it more useful to use as palettes the character ensemble on the Dumbarton Oaks
Athena Ruby website. See here for a <a href="ARpalette.html">Web-based custom
palette</a> (caution: some versions of Safari do not support this tool; other major
browsers do). Or download the <a href="AR ensemble.docx.zip">Word</a>, <a
href="AR ensemble.indd.zip">InDesign</a>, <a href="AR ensemble.pdf">PDF</a>, <a
href="AR.xml">XML</a>, or <a href="ARdatabase.html">HTML</a> document, and simply
copy the characters you want.</p>
<h2>Editing with Athena Ruby</h2>
<p>Athena Ruby is a complex font that uses advanced, specialized features in OpenType. The
advanced features are too advanced, in fact, for the software most commonly used in
2012, when the font was released. <a
href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AoACHOAujc-7dGUzMko4N3RaSFctWnI0UVJrUmcxNkE"
>See here for a list of commonly used programs</a>, and their compatibility with
Athena Ruby. </p>
<p>There are roughly three ways to write documents using Athena Ruby:</p>
<ol>
<li>Use a generic word processor along with a markup language. This method preserves the
integrity of the underlying data, separates meaning from appearance, and is best
equipped to handle robust layout challenges both in print and on screen. It is also
the least familiar to scholars, and will come in use only gradually, as scholars get
more familiar with XML, TeX, and similar technologies. </li>
<li>Use a program that uses advanced OpenType features. Because most software of this
kind pertains to specialized typesetting, this method is most suited to
publishers.</li>
<li>Use a decent word processor. This method will be the most familiar to most users,
but advanced features of Athena Ruby will be available only by proxy, through the
Private Use Area.</li>
</ol>
<p>Each of these techniques are described below, beginning with the method most familiar
(but least ideal), and concluding with least familiar (but most ideal).</p>
<h3>Method C: A decent word processor</h3>
<p>The most common word processors—Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, Google
documents—are popular because they are powerful and easy to use. But the software
companies that maintain these programs are selective in the typographic features they
support. The advanced OpenType features used by Athena Ruby are usually poorly
supported, if at all. Although these programs are not ideal for advanced typography,
Athena Ruby has been designed to work with them. Variant letterforms and discretionary
ligatures are accessed not through their proper Unicode points but through the Private
Use Area (PUA). If you are using character finders and palettes (see above), you will
find variant forms and ligatures after all the major alphabets, from U+E100 onward. This
method is not ideal because the variant characters are bound to Unicode points that have
no meaning, and so the text cannot be reliably searched, sorted, or indexed. To make PUA
Athena Ruby text Unicode compliant, it must be converted and exported to an environment
that can handle advanced typographic features. </p>
<p>This use of Athena Ruby is ideal for pdfs, personal word processing documents, and
publications that do not require much professionalism or interoperability.</p>
<h3>Method B: Professional layout software</h3>
<p>Less commonly used but more appropriate for professional publication are a small group of
software programs that take advantage of OpenType features. These programs are
specialized and require skill to use competently.</p>
<p><strong>InDesign</strong> (Adobe), widely used by publishers, can take advantage of many
of Athena Ruby's features. See <a href="AR ensemble.indd.zip">here for an example
file</a>.</p>
<p>Unicode text preservation results may vary. Text should remain Unicode compliant from
start to end, although in some cases software may embed raw glyph IDs and not the
underlying Unicode points. One needs to turn on discretionary ligatures and stylistic
variants for the advanced OpenType features to work. InDesign version 5.5 exhibits
unusual behavior regarding complex decorations. In traversing a series of complex
decorations, the cursor may erratically jump. It is unclear what creates this effect.
Experiments with the same string in other programs do not produce the same results.</p>
<p><strong>T<span
style="vertical-align: -0.5ex; margin-left: -0.1667em; margin-right: -0.125em;"
>E</span>X</strong> is a sophisticated typesetting system that uses text markup
to take advantage of advanced typography. Special versions of TeX, notably XeTeX, are
also equipped to access ligatures and variant letterforms in compliance with Unicode
standards.</p>
<p>Method B is ideal for generating more professional-looking pdfs than those generated
under Method C, since the software programs provide subtle but important typographic
finesse. There is also a greater chance that underlying Unicode data will be
preserved.</p>
<h3>Method A: An XML/HTML editor (plus markup)</h3>
<p>The preferred method for getting the most out of Athena Ruby involves a digital
publishing workflow. The stages of that workflow, very broadly, include the following
four interrelated steps:</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Marking up text</strong>. The text meant to be in Athena Ruby is typed in
ordinary, plain text in a structured document, most commonly HTML, XML, or XHTML.
Specific flavors of XML, such as TEI and EpiDoc, are good candidates, although a
given schema may need some customization. The editor deals only with the text's
Unicode values, not typography. Characters that should get special treatment in
Athena Ruby are marked with unique, special tags. </li>
<li><strong>Defining what the markup means</strong>. The markup codes chosen in the
first stage are defined, usually in a stylesheet, to facilitate the next steps. The
markup language chosen will dictate the kind of stylesheet to be used. For HTML and
XHTML some form of CSS is most common. An XML project might rely on a companion file
in XSLT, XML, or a similar structured format.</li>
<li><strong>Anticipating reading environments and file formats</strong>. One usually
chooses a markup language with some sense of how the text will be most advantageous
to readers. An HTML file is meant for internet browsers. XML files are more
flexible, and can be rendered into web pages, ordinary text documents, or even pdfs.
One must decide which browsers, or even which devices, to support. Decisions here
may affect previous steps, and may change the workflow in other ways.</li>
<li><strong>Transforming the text documents</strong>. Once the previous three steps have
been synchronized, a mechanism needs to be set up to transform the marked up text
(step 1) with the stylesheet (step 2), and generate files appropriate for the
specified reading environments (step 3). If a web project, this transformation could
be done before files are uploaded to the server (e.g., static HTML files), or a
server could make the transformations on the fly (i.e., server-side
transformations), or files could be delivered with instructions for a reader's
browser to make the transformation after the files are delivered (i.e., client-side
transformations). If one intends other types of results, such as electronic
publications (e.g., pdf, epub, mobi) one may wish to develop XSLT or XSL-FO files to
facilitate the transformation.</li>
</ol>
<p>These four steps are usually negotiated concurrently, as an author or a team discovers
the method that works best for them and their audience. Because the four steps require
different skills and expertise, this method usually requires collaboration and
teamwork.</p>
<p>Users of this method will want to pay attention to the draft of <a
href="http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-fonts/">CSS Fonts Module Level 3</a>, which is
the incipient standard for how to access and use advanced OpenType features on the
Internet.</p>
<p>This method will be deployed most often in HTML-based projects, which are
browser-dependent. But not all browsers are created equal. At the present, Firefox (PC
or Mac) and Chrome (Mac particularly) best support Athena Ruby's advanced features. The
best way to compare behavior is to open the <a href="ARdatabase.html">database</a> in
different browsers.</p>
<p>The use of Athena Ruby on web-based projects requires some customized work with CSS, to
accommodate the needs of different browsers. A block of CSS code using Athena Ruby might
look like this:</p>
<p class="instr">@font-face{<br /> font-family:athenaruby;<br />
src:url('../fonts/athenaruby_b018-webfont.eot?#iefix')
format('embedded-opentype'),<br />
url('../fonts/athenaruby_b018-webfont.woff') format('woff'), <br />
url('../fonts/AthenaRuby_b018.ttf') format('truetype'), <br />
url('../fonts/athenaruby_b018-webfont.svg#athenaruby')
format('svg');<br /> }<br /> .athenaruby{<br />
font-family:athenaruby;<br /> } </p>
<p>Study some of the example projects to get a sense of how to develop CSS that works best
for your project.</p>
<h3>Synopsis of Methods</h3>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<td> </td>
<td>
<p>Method A<br />XML/HTML editor plus markup</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Method B<br />Advanced Typographic Software</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Method C<br />Common Word Processors</p>
</td>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td> Who should use </td>
<td> Anyone publishing inscriptions with XML or a similar markup language.
Especially suitable for collaborative Web-based projects (e.g., EpiDoc,
SigiDoc) </td>
<td> Publishers and those with specialized software that supports direct input
of individual glyphs (e.g., InDesign) </td>
<td> Anyone who needs to display a particular variant in software that does not
provide access to OpenType Layout or direct glyph input </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> How to use advanced features </td>
<td> Mark variants, ligatures, and symbols with tags (e.g., XML); set up
stylesheets (e.g., CSS) to render the code correctly.</td>
<td> Choose variant letters, ligatures, and other glyphs with built-in advanced
glyph palette </td>
<td> Use word processor or character map software (e.g., CharMap on the PC,
Character Palette on the Mac) to select variants in the PUA codeplane </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Ideal publishing venues</td>
<td>Print and digital (PDF and web-based)</td>
<td>Print and digital (PDF only)</td>
<td>Print and digital (PDF only)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> Advantages </td>
<td> Text remains Unicode compliant from start to end. Does not rely upon
specialized software for document creation. CSS standards may be used, so
readers need not have the font installed </td>
<td> One can see precisely which variant or ligature is being used. Text should
remain Unicode compliant from start to end, although in some cases software
may embed raw glyph IDs. </td>
<td> Can be used in many commonly used programs (e.g., Word, OpenOffice, Excel).
One can see precisely which variant or ligature is being used. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> Disadvantages </td>
<td> Cumbersome to see variants as you type. Training in XML can be daunting,
and few use it (so far). CSS syntax for advanced layout features not yet
finalized and is only just beginning to be supported in browsers. </td>
<td> Limited to relatively expensive, professional page layout software. Unicode
text preservation results may vary. </td>
<td> This method uses the PUA, which is not recommended because it is
idiosyncratic and font-dependent. Text is not Unicode compliant, so cannot
be reliably searched, sorted or indexed (to make it Unicode compliant the
text must be converted). </td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h2>Principles of glyph design</h2>
<p>The glyphs in Athena Ruby were designed with two guiding principles. The first was to
preserve our publishing legacy. The custom typography in Dumbarton Oaks books evolved
over time, and glyphs were created for specific catalogues or monographs. Nicholas
Oikonomides pioneered the categorization and dating of letterforms in Byzantine seals,
epitomized by his <span class="title">A Collection of Dated Byzantine Lead Seals</span>
(Washington, D.C., 1986), which featured the world's first font for Byzantine
inscriptions. This led to a number of other fonts developed specially in the 1990s for
publications about seals, coins, and silver plate. We wished to consolidate and preserve
that legacy, so Athena Ruby's design conserves much of the aesthetic from Athena and
older fonts.</p>
<p>The second principle was to foster a scholarly conversation about Byzantine letterforms.
We conservatively anticipated variants, ligatures, and designs that had not been
included in our older fonts, but seemed especially useful, and noncontroversial, to
distinguish as new types. Our focus was on seals, coins, weights. Some media, such as
brick stamps, bread stamps, and frescoes, were also consulted, but not as
extensively.</p>
<p>The glyphs in Athena Ruby are meant to evoke, but not replicate, types of letters.
Authors who need to replicate exact letterforms not found in Athena Ruby should either
augment the font on their own, or work with customized drawings and photographs.</p>
<h2>Frequently asked questions</h2>
<p class="question">How did you assign characters to the Private Use Area (PUA)? Why doesn't
your arrangement coincide with those found in other epigraphic fonts?</p>
<p class="answer">Other custom fonts with glyphs useful in Byzantine epigraphy, such as <a
href="http://www.scholarsfonts.net/" rel="external" target="_new">Cardo</a>, <a
class="external-link"
href="http://www.ifao.egnet.net/publications/outils/polices/#grec">IFAOGrec
Unicode</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://junicode.sourceforge.net/"
>Junicode</a>, and <a class="external-link"
href="http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pinax/greekkeys/NAUdownload.html">New Athena
Unicode</a>, also use the PUA. Each font was built with a different rationale for
the selection and arrangement of the glyphs in the PUA. That is entirely appropriate, if
not expected, since the PUA is meant for private use, and therefore must involve
arbitrary decisions. We decided early on that we could not align the characters needed
in Athena Ruby with the rationale used by other epigraphic fonts for the PUA.
<br /> Most PUA codepoints in Athena Ruby are concessions. In an ideal world, the
R-shaped beta, very common in Byzantine seals, would be accessed by keying in U+0392
then accessing variant 1. But because most software programs do not allow a user to
choose variant letterforms, we provided a copy of the glyph at U+E11B. This concessive
use of the PUA applies to the first three subblocks (U+E100.., U+E300.., U+E400..).
Subsequent blocks (U+E500.., U+E600.., U+E700..) have no corresponding Unicode point,
and may never have one. Many of these proprietary codepoints are used in different ways
in different disciplines, and there is no guarantee that the meanings imputed by users
of Athena Ruby would hold true in other proprietary fonts. So assignments to the PUA
have been made with attention only to users of Athena Ruby, to avoid giving the
impression that it is commensurate with other fonts.<br /> Nevertheless, some of
the overlap between Athena Ruby and other epigraphic fonts points to agreement on types
of letterforms in the Byzantine period. Discussion about this topic is ideal for the <a
href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/athena-ruby">Athena Ruby
Google group</a>.</p>
<p class="question">How do you use the overbar in conjunction with ligatures?</p>
<p class="answer">If you're using the private use area, use U+0305 immediately after the
glyph. If you're using Unicode-based ligatures, use U+0305 after each ligature letter
that takes an overbar.</p>
<p class="question">Why don't you include other Greek Unicode characters such as the
digamma, the sho, and the san?</p>
<p class="answer">The font covers the Byzantine period, so characters that went out of use
before the foundation of Constantinople (324) were not included.</p>
<p class="question">I don't see a special character that I need. Could you create a new
version of the font with these new forms?</p>
<p class="answer">Dumbarton Oaks will add to the official version of the font only as our
publishing needs grow, and even then only as scholars develop a consensus about
letterform types. But this should not keep you from developing your own special glyphs,
either as an extension to Athena Ruby or as a new font altogether. Under the <a
rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons
License</a> users are required to share any modified forms of Athena Ruby. We hope
the font encourages deeper study, conversation, and discoveries in the typology of
Byzantine letterforms. But that task belongs to the scholarly community.</p>
<p class="question">I already have a document that uses the previous Athena font. Is there a
conversion tool I can use?</p>
<p class="answer">Here is a <a href="converter.html">web-based conversion tool</a>, under
development.</p>
<p class="question">Your database of letterforms is incomplete and incorrect. How do I
supply corrections?</p>
<p class="answer">Join the <a href="https://groups.google.com/d/forum/athena-ruby">Athena
Ruby discussion list</a> and pose the correction. Should participants react
favorably to the suggestions, the errors will be corrected. Proposed new characters will
be held in reserve until our publication needs justify the expense of introducing
professionally drawn characters.</p>
<p class="question">I'm setting up a web-based project, but the font isn't showing. What is
wrong?</p>
<p class="answer">Common problems include the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>Different browsers are suited to different font formats. Make sure you download the
<a href="fonts/athenaruby_b018-webfont.zip" target="blank">version for
installing on your server, for online publications</a> (zipped).</li>
<li>Perhaps your server has not been instructed to deliver certain files, such as woff,
eot, and svg types. The way to check this is to go to the address bar of your
browser and type exactly the URL of the font (e.g.,
http://mysite.com/athenaruby_b018-webfont.ttf). It should download fine. If it
doesn't or if there are error messages, your server's permissions are likely the
cause. Check with your server and see if you can edit the file that regulates your
mimetypes with text something similar to this: <p class="instr"
>.eot application/octet-stream<br />.otf application/x-font-otf
<br />.svg image/svg+xml<br />.woff application/font-woff</p>
</li>
<li>Make sure your page declares itself to be UTF-8 through a tag such as <code><meta
http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> </code></li>
</ul>
<p class="question">I'm using Athena Ruby in an online project. I'm trying to get a
variation of a ligature. I can get discretionary ligatures to appear, but I can't get
the variant to show up. What am I doing wrong?</p>
<p class="answer">This problem frequently happens when you try to invoke the discretionary
ligature and the variation on two separate lines of CSS code. For example (using
character variant 49, alpha and beta):</p><p class="instr">
   font-feature-settings:"liga" on, "dlig"
on;<br />   font-feature-settings: 'cv49' 1;</p>Because of specificity
rules behind CSS you need to invoke all the OpenType features on a single line, e.g.,:<p
class="instr">   font-feature-settings:"liga" on, "dlig" on, "cv49"
on;</p>
<p class="question">Why doesn't Athena Ruby support the full set of ASCII characters?</p>
<p class="answer">Font designers for Windows XP and earlier operating systems generally
regarded it as a best practice to include in each font at least one complete Windows
8-bit codepage for backward compatibility. Since Athena Ruby relies on font and layout
technologies that are not found on older systems, backward compatibility seemed
irrelevant. Including a full codepage would have added considerably to the cost of the
font's development, without serving any of its main functions.</p>
<h2>Credits</h2>
<p><strong>Designers</strong>: Tiro Typeworks</p>
<p><strong>Project manager</strong>: Joel Kalvesmaki</p>
<p><strong>Consultants</strong>: Eric McGeer, Cécile Morrisson, Werner Seibt, </p>
</body>
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