Installing Additional Greek & Hebrew Fonts

Beckon&Muse
Beckon&Muse Member Posts: 34
edited November 2024 in English Forum

So, I have owned a few linguist software fonts for a few years now, and since then, I have never seen them (NewJerusalemU, SymbolGreekU, GraecaU) available as a choice for the Greek or Hebrew available fonts in Logos program settings (on a Mac). So, I never thought it was possible to access additional fonts as choices for those language settings in Logos. That is, until I installed GFS Porson the other day; upon going through the settings, I noticed that GFS Porson is available as an option for Greek Fonts in Logos. I'd like to know how is the software is designed to choose which fonts it will and will not make available as options in the program settings?

Comments

  • Bradley Grainger (Logos)
    Bradley Grainger (Logos) Administrator, Logos Employee Posts: 11,979

    The software contains a whitelist of fonts that we have tested and know work well with the Unicode encoding in our resources. (Many fonts that claim to support Greek only support modern Greek and provide a poor experience.) We can test these Linguist Software fonts to check if they're compatible; it may take a little extra time since they're not available for free download.

  • Beckon&Muse
    Beckon&Muse Member Posts: 34

    Well that is really nice to know! Is there any way to find out what the white list is for Greek and Hebrew fonts?

    By the way, here is a link to their website.
    Greek: https://www.linguistsoftware.com/lgku.htm
    Hebrew: https://www.linguistsoftware.com/lhebu.htm

    Even if it might not mean much, I assure you that Logos should go ahead and whitelist all fonts offered by Linguist Software. Payne's (the creator) fonts are increasingly becoming publishers' go to foundry for biblical language support.

    Also, might I make a suggestion? I understand the benefit for developers to have whitelists for verified fonts; it inevitably prevents countless complaints about the software not working properly while not understanding unicode. However, for those who do know and understand type and unicode, perhaps Logos could offer the option to enable an advanced feature to choose fonts outside of the whitelist? It could follow a warning and acknowledgment dialogue, etc. I always appreciate developers (companies in general) that allow users to make choices in how to use the products they purchase rather than their creator's restricting the customers experience. 

  • Veli Voipio
    Veli Voipio MVP Posts: 2,032

    Actually you can use even non-whitelisted fonts by using "Set Greek Font to Xxx"

    Xxx is the font name as in the Word font list.

    You may use Hebrew instead of Greek.

    I use fonts from that Payne. Can't remember their names and they don't show up in the Logos font list, but my Greek font was tailor-made for me (for a reasonable price), showing all characters as capital letters and without diacritics or other fuss. May not work 100% but I don't care.

    Gold package, and original language material and ancient text material, SIL and UBS books, discourse Hebrew OT and Greek NT. PC with Windows 11

  • Veli Voipio
    Veli Voipio MVP Posts: 2,032

    Six years ago my advice worked well.

    Now when I have a new desktop computer with Win 11 and Logos 9 newest I could not set the font, the command box just stubbornly kept parsing it.

    Then I found out the I should go down the list, thus the problem was in me [:$]

    Gold package, and original language material and ancient text material, SIL and UBS books, discourse Hebrew OT and Greek NT. PC with Windows 11

  • Veli Voipio
    Veli Voipio MVP Posts: 2,032

    I copied a picture in the reply above but it is not visible except in the edit mode.

    Here is the picture inserted as a file in the old way (which is kind of workaround, has been like this as long as I can remember, although I was hoping the the recent server update had fixed it)

    Gold package, and original language material and ancient text material, SIL and UBS books, discourse Hebrew OT and Greek NT. PC with Windows 11