Hans Hagen, Jerzy Ludwichowski, Volker Schaa NAJAAR 2006 47 The New Font Project: TEX Gyre Abstract metric and encoding files for each font. We look for- In this short presentation, we will introduce a new ward to an extended TFM format which will lift this re- project: the “lm-ization” of the free fonts that come striction and, in conjunction with OpenType, simplify with T X distributions. We will discuss the project E delivery and usage of fonts in TEX. objectives, timeline and cross-lug funding aspects. We especially look forward to assistance from pdfTEX users, because the pdfTEX team is working on the implementation on the support for OpenType Introduction fonts. An important consideration from Hans Hagen: “In The New Font Project is a brainchild of Hans Ha- the end, even Ghostscript will benefit, so I can even gen, triggered mainly by the very good reception imagine those fonts ending up in the Ghostscript dis- of the Latin Modern (LM) font project by the TEX tribution.” community. After consulting other LUG leaders, The idea of preparing such font families was sug- Bogusław Jackowski and Janusz M. Nowacki, aka gested by the pdfTEX development team. Their pro- “GUST type.foundry”, were asked to formulate the pro- posal triggered a lively discussion by an informal ject. group of representatives of several TEX user groups — The next section contains its outline, as prepared notably Karl Berry (TUG), Hans Hagen (NTG), Jerzy by Bogusław Jackowski and Janusz M. Nowacki. The Ludwichowski (GUST), Volker RW Schaa (DANTE)— remaining sections were written by us. who suggested that we should approach this project as a research, technical and implementation team, and Project outline promised their help in taking care of promotion, integ- ration, supervising and financing. Our aim is to prepare a family of fonts, equipped The amount of time needed to carry out the task with a broad repertoire of Latin diacritical characters, depends on the number of fonts to be included in the based on the freely available good quality fonts. We collection, but it can be safely estimated that a 4-font think of an “LM-ization” of freely available fonts, i.e., family (regular, italic, bold, and bold italic) can be pre- providing about as many diacritical characters per font pared within 1–2 months, depending on the state of as we prepared for the Latin Modern font package original material), which, for the collection of fonts (ca. 400 characters) which would cover all European mentioned below, would mean that the project can be languages as well as some non-European ones (Viet- accomplished within about two years. Assuming that namese, Navajo). the launch of the project could be made in the middle Since the provided character sets would be so close, of 2006, the conclusion of the first stage of the project such “LM-ized” fonts would work with all the TEX pack- might be expected by the end of 2008. ages that the LM fonts work with, which would ease The following fonts are presently considered worthy their integration. The result would be distributed, like of enhancement: the LM fonts, in the form of PostScript Type 1 fonts, OpenType fonts, MetaType1 sources and the support- 1. The collection of 33 basic PostScript fonts, donated ing TEX machinery. by URW++ and distributed with Ghostscript, We would like to emphasize that the preparing of consisting of eight 4-font families: fonts in the OpenType format is an important aspect of the project. OpenType fonts are becoming more and URW Gothic (i.e., Avant Garde) more popular, they are Unicode-based, can be used on URW Bookman various platforms and claim to be a replacement for 2 2 Century Schoolbook Type 1 and TrueType fonts. Moreover, Type 1 fonts Nimbus Sans (i.e., Helvetica) were declared obsolete by Adobe a few years ago. 2 2 Nimbus Sans Condensed (i.e., Helvetica con- Since TFM format is restricted to 256 distinct charac- densed) ter widths, it will still be necessary to prepare multiple 2 48 MAPS 34 Hans Hagen, Jerzy Ludwichowski, Volker Schaa Nimbus Roman (i.e., Times) stage 2: around 15,000 EUR 2 Nimbus Mono (i.e., Courier) 2 stage 3: unknown 2 URW Palladio (i.e., Palatino) 2 2 The exact figure for the second stage depends on and one single-font “family”: what is needed and missing. We imagine the project to be extended with additional stages in order to bring URW Chancery (i.e., Zapf Chancery) more scripts into Open Type and/or to clean up other 2 fonts as well. (Symbol and Zapf Dingbats fonts are left out.) The current financial state of the project: 2. Donated by Bitstream (4-font families): TUG India: 2,000 USD for the first year of the Charter 2 project and — if possible — a contribution for the 2 Vera next year. 2 CSTUG: 500 EUR per year for the project duration, 3. Donated by Adobe (4-font family): 2 and expenses directly connected with implement- ing good Czech and Slovak support. Utopia NTG: 20% of the project costs, i.e., 4,000 EUR for 2 2 the first stage. 4. Other families donated by URW++: DANTE: 7,500 EUR this year; additional funding 2 will be proposed at the September user group Letter Gothic meeting. 2 URW Garamond GUST: local infrastructure and expenses of font 2 2 developers. Perhaps other interesting free fonts will emerge in the TUG: positive but the amount is yet unknown, future. 2 depends on contributions to the project fund, more As to the budget — for the fonts listed above — info later this year. there are altogether thirteen 4-font families and the 1- font URW Chancery. We would be satisfied if we could Since the first stage runs this year and next year get a support of 1,500 EUR per a 4-font family and (start: May 2006) and since payments will take place 500 EUR per a 1-font family. In the case of the fonts after delivery of each completed font family, we can listed above this adds up to 20,000 EUR. We propose safely conclude that project expenses in 2006 can be that the funding is made step-wise, i.e., the payments covered and given the above we can also be confident are made after the release of an enhanced family of that the rest of the first stage is secured. fonts. The second stage is partly secured as well. We will Obviously, there is scope for a second stage: the try to broaden funding as soon and as much as pos- fonts can be further developed, as one can think for sible. It would be good if this project can also take example of adding cap-small-caps, old style digits, pro- care of the needs of Indian, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew portional digits, and more. Once the first stage of the and Arab scripts, but we’ll have to see … project is finished, we could embark on further en- The suite of fonts will be officially presented on a hancements. This would be somewhat simpler, but still special font CD for members of user groups. a laborious task; we estimate the effort to be about 60– 70% of the first stage. Co-ordination Funding This will done by DANTE e.V.in close co-operation with (at least) NTG, GUST, and TUG. The project can be divided into three stages: Late-breaking news: the name of the game stage 1: combining existing fonts into LM compat- 2 ible layouts and identifying gaps Nowhere above is explained the mysterious “TEX Gyre” stage 2: filling in the gaps which appears in the title. After this paper, consist- 2 stage 3: math companion fonts ing of the preceding sections, was presented at the Ba- 2 choTEX 2006 conference, a discussion on how to name For these the estimated fundings needed are: the collection of the New Font Project fonts was star- ted by Bogusław Jackowski. A collective name for the stage 1: around 20,000 EUR project iself as well as names for the individual font 2 The New Font Project: TEX Gyre NAJAAR 2006 49 Table 1. Naming of the TEX Gyre fonts PostScript name Original URW name OpenType name tfm name roota TeXGyreAdventor URW Gothic L TeX Gyre Adventor qag TeXGyreBonum URW Bookman L TeX Gyre Bonum qbk TeXGyreCursor Nimbus Mono L TeX Gyre Cursor qcr TeXGyreHeros Nimbus Sans L TeX Gyre Heros qhv TeXGyrePagella Figure 1. The TEX Gyre logotype URW Palladio L TeX Gyre Pagella qpl families were looked for. In another lively mail ex- change among the above people and others, between TeXGyreTermes 23rd May 2006 and 5th June 2006, the final proposal Nimbus Roman No9 L TeX Gyre Termes was hammered out. qtm Some of the collective names proposed: T X- E TeXGyreSchola Modern, TEXSurge, TEXFountain, TEXSuper, TEX Font Foundry, T Xelent, not to mention stranger concoctions Century Schoolbook L TeX Gyre Schola E qcs for individual families like TEXOnitalap (Palatino re- versed) or — for Bookman reversed — TEXMankoob. A TeXGyreChorus minimalist proposal of T XF prevailed for a while, then E URW Chancery L TeX Gyre Chorus TEX Fountain Collection fought against TEX Fount and qzc even T XFun was proposed until T X Gyre was coined E E a by Karl Berry. For example, tfm files for the members of the Pagella This was liked by Bogusław: it nicely plays with the family are named qplr.tfm, qpli.tfm, qplb.tfm, qplbi.tfm for the regular, italic, bold and bold italic logotype he used in his presentations of the LM pro- faces, respectively.