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NRSI: Computers & Writing Systems

SIL HOME | CONTACT US

You are here: Type Design > Resources > Font Downloads
Short URL: http://scripts.sil.org/CharisSIL_download

Charis SIL Font Download

NRSI staff, 2007-01-31; 112359 reads


‘...finally you have a barred ‘B’ (U+0243 ).  Thanks.’


Table of Contents for this web page:

    Registration Form
    License
        SIL OPEN FONT LICENSE
    Notes to contributors
    Font Download
        Charis SIL 4.100 (official release)
        Charis SIL Literacy 4.0.02 (official release) (Version 4.002)
    Installation and Use
    Release History
    Related Packages
    Other Resources

Registration Form

Please list specific languages/scripts you plan to use this font with:

    

Any other requests or comments?

    

If you wish to receive announcements about Charis SIL and related fonts (including updates to the fonts), please enter your e-mail address (it will be kept private):

    

Thank you for your interest in Charis SIL.

License

License details:

Charis SIL is released under the SIL Open Font License - please read it carefully and do not download the fonts unless you agree to the terms of the license:

This Font Software is Copyright (c) 1997-2007, SIL International ( http://scripts.sil.org/).

“Charis SIL” is a Reserved Font Name for this Font Software. “SIL” is a Reserved Font Name for this Font Software.

This Font Software is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.0. No modification of the license is permitted, only verbatim copy is allowed. This license is copied below, and is also available with a FAQ at:  http://scripts.sil.org/OFL

SIL OPEN FONT LICENSE

Version 1.0 - 22 November 2005

PREAMBLE

The goals of the Open Font License (OFL) are to stimulate worldwide development of cooperative font projects, to support the font creation efforts of academic and linguistic communities, and to provide an 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 sold with any software provided that the font names of derivative works are changed. The fonts and derivatives, however, cannot be released under any other type of license.

DEFINITIONS

“Font Software” refers to any and all of the following:

  • font files
  • data files
  • source code
  • build scripts
  • documentation

“Reserved Font Name” refers to the Font Software name as seen by users and any other names as specified after the copyright statement.

“Standard Version” refers to the collection of Font Software components as distributed by the Copyright Holder.

“Modified Version” refers to any derivative font software made by adding to, deleting, or substituting — in part or in whole — any of the components of the Standard 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 Standard or Modified Versions, may be sold by itself.

2) Standard or Modified Versions of the Font Software may be bundled, redistributed and 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), in part or in whole, unless explicit written permission is granted by the Copyright Holder. This restriction applies to all references stored in the Font Software, such as the font menu name and other font description fields, which are used to differentiate the font from others.

4) The name(s) of the Copyright Holder 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 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 using this license, and may not be distributed under any other license.

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 design of the basic character set of Charis SIL is similar (but not identical) to Bitstream Charter, designed by Matthew Carter. The following notice accompanied the Charter fonts:

(c) Copyright 1989-1992, Bitstream Inc., Cambridge, MA.

You are hereby granted permission under all Bitstream propriety rights to use, copy, modify, sublicense, sell, and redistribute the 4 Bitstream Charter (r) Type 1 outline fonts and the 4 Courier Type 1 outline fonts for any purpose and without restriction; provided, that this notice is left intact on all copies of such fonts and that Bitstream's trademark is acknowledged as shown below on all unmodified copies of the 4 Charter Type 1 fonts.

BITSTREAM CHARTER is a registered trademark of Bitstream Inc.

SIL International is the creator of the Charis SIL fonts, and is the owner of all proprietary rights therein.

Notes to contributors

The release of Charis SIL version 4.0.02 (Version 4.002) (and any subsequent versions) under the OFL license provides a means for people to contribute to the project. For information on what you're allowed to change or modify, consult the OFL and OFL-FAQ. The OFL-FAQ also gives a very general rationale regarding why you would want to contribute to the project.

Anyone can make their own modified version of Charis SIL (using a different name), but SIL International will continue to maintain and develop the canonical version of the Charis SIL fonts. As the package maintainer, we warmly welcome contributions. Here are some things to keep in mind:

  • Format: We are open to contributions in various formats, but if you want to maximise the chances of us including your work, please make it available to us (via email or a URL) as either a FontLab database (preferred) or a PostScript Type 1 (or OT-CFF) font.
  • Source files: We are not yet making the source files available, because our build system is rather complex and difficult to reproduce. We hope to include an easier process in the future.
  • Copyright attribution: If you submit something for inclusion in the main Charis SIL fonts, we will ask you to affirm that it is your original work, and ask you to assign the copyright of your work to SIL International. This is to ensure that future releases can be made under improved versions of the OFL without needing to track you down for further permission. This follows the same principle used by the FSF. Keep in mind that we are a not-for-profit organization committed to free/libre and open source software, and that any contributions incorporated in the fonts will always be available under the OFL or a similar license.
  • Quality: Because we want to be able to guarantee a high level of quality for the primary Charis SIL fonts, we will review submissions carefully. Please don't be discouraged if we do not include a submission for this reason, or ask you to make specific revisions.
  • Types of contributions: If you wish to make a contribution - a set of additional glyphs, scripts, code, etc. - please contact us before you do any work to see if it is a contribution we currently need. Every addition adds to the complexity of the project and needs to be carefully planned. This also avoids two people working on the same type of addition at the same time.
  • Linux packages: Please contact the upstream maintainer of the various packages -  Nicolas Spalinger - if you want to help package or maintain a package.
  • When submissions will be included: We plan to revise the fonts when major updates are needed (eg new versions of Unicode). If you wish to make submissions, contact us on the timing.

Font Download

If you agree to the terms of use (described above), then download the fonts from the following links. Previous versions can be found on the Version page.

Charis SIL 4.100 (official release)

This version supports Unicode 5.0!

Charis SIL 4.100 font release - SIL PUA 5.0 (Windows, Macintosh and Linux)
NRSI staff, 2007-01-31
Download "CharisSIL4.100.zip", ZIP archive, 2MB [25429 downloads]
Charis SIL 4.100 font release - SIL PUA 5.0 (Windows and other)
NRSI staff, 2007-01-31
Download "CharisSIL4", Windows application, 2MB [10907 downloads]
Charis SIL 4.100 font release - SIL PUA 5.0 (Debian package, GNU/Linux)
NRSI staff, 2007-02-08
Download "CharisSIL4", Debian Linux Package, 2MB [1362 downloads]

Please see Charis SIL Font Home for licensing issues, user support, and documentation of this font.

This official release includes the following changes:

  • New features:
    • Open o alternate (affects: U+1D97 , U+1D53 , U+1D10 , U+0186 , U+0254 )
    • Chinantec tones (affects: U+02C8  MODIFIER LETTER VERTICAL LINE, U+02C9  MODIFIER LETTER MACRON, U+02CA  MODIFIER LETTER ACUTE ACCENT, U+02CB  MODIFIER LETTER GRAVE ACCENT
    • 9-level pitches (affects: U+F1F1, U+F1F2, U+F1F3, U+F1F4, U+F1F5, U+F1F6, U+F1F7, U+F1F8, U+F1F9, U+0020  SPACE) See also Pitch Contours document.
  • Changed features:
    • Added U+0493  CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER GHE WITH STROKE, U+F327  CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER GHE WITH STROKE AND DESCENDER and U+04FB  CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER GHE WITH STROKE AND HOOK to “Slant italic specials”
    • Added U+F26A  LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SALTILLO to “Modifier apostrophe alternates”
  • Design changes:
    • Tone bars no longer limited to 3 sequences (new for OT)
    • Placement of ogonek on U and u corrected.
    • U+02BE  MODIFIER LETTER RIGHT HALF RING and U+02BF  MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING (added attachment points)
    • U+031A  COMBINING LEFT ANGLE ABOVE (removed attachment point)
    • U+04AA  CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ES WITH DESCENDER (direction of hook corrected)
    • U+04AB  CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ES WITH DESCENDER (direction of hook corrected)
    • U+0427  CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER CHE (character has been widened)
    • U+04B6  CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER CHE WITH DESCENDER (character has been widened)
    • U+04B8  CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER CHE WITH VERTICAL STROKE (character has been widened)
    • U+04CB  CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER KHAKASSIAN CHE (character has been widened)
    • U+04F4  CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER CHE WITH DIAERESIS (character has been widened)
    • U+03B2  GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA (added serifs)
    • U+1D66  GREEK SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER BETA (added serifs)
    • U+1D5D  MODIFIER LETTER SMALL BETA (added serifs)
    • U+F1E7  MODIFIER LETTER LOW CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT (shifted up)
    • U+F1E8  MODIFIER LETTER LOW CARON (shifted up)
    • made underlining of text thicker and shifted down
    • Fixed bug in GSUB table to work in Pango
    • Shifted position (up) of non-spacing diacritics
    • U+023C  LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH STROKE
    • U+1D09  LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED I (changed baseline position)
    • U+1D3D  MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL OU (changed attachment point)
    • U+03B1  GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA, U+03B2  GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA, U+03B8  GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA and U+03C3  GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA (made italic in the italic and bold/italic faces)
    • Improved hinting for U+0447  CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER CHE CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER CHE and derivatives
    • Minor changes to design of U+0414  CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER DE, U+0434  CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER DE, U+041B  CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER EL, and U+043B  CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER EL.
    • Changed design of some of the Cyrillic italics
      • U+0433  CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER GHE
      • U+0491  CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER GHE WITH UPTURN
      • U+0493  CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER GHE WITH STROKE
      • U+04FB  CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER GHE WITH STROKE AND HOOK
      • U+F327  CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER GHE WITH STROKE AND DESCENDER
      • U+04A7  CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER PE WITH MIDDLE HOOK
      • U+04B5  CYRILLIC SMALL LIGATURE TE TSE
      • U+0495  CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER GHE WITH MIDDLE HOOK
  • Added:
    • Latin and Cyrillic Unicode 5.0 characters added and if they were already in SIL's corporate PUA they are double-encoded.
    • U+2053 
    • U+211F 
    • U+2123 
    • U+2308 
    • U+2309 
    • U+2423 
    • U+FE20..U+FE23 (positioning of these may not be perfect, use of U+0361  COMBINING DOUBLE INVERTED BREVE and U+0360  COMBINING DOUBLE TILDE is preferred)
    • PUA characters:
      • F17B COMBINING ALMOST EQUAL TO BELOW
      • F1F1 MODIFIER LETTER PITCH ONE
      • F1F2 MODIFIER LETTER PITCH TWO
      • F1F3 MODIFIER LETTER PITCH THREE
      • F1F4 MODIFIER LETTER PITCH FOUR
      • F1F5 MODIFIER LETTER PITCH FIVE
      • F1F6 MODIFIER LETTER PITCH SIX
      • F1F7 MODIFIER LETTER PITCH SEVEN
      • F1F8 MODIFIER LETTER PITCH EIGHT
      • F1F9 MODIFIER LETTER PITCH NINE
      • F266 LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH RETROFLEX HOOK AND BELT
      • F267 LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED Y WITH BELT
      • F268 LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL L WITH BELT
      • F269 LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED R WITH LONG LEG AND HOOK
      • F26A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SALTILLO

Charis SIL Literacy 4.0.02 (official release) (Version 4.002)

Charis SIL Literacy 4.0.02 font release - SIL PUA 4.1 (Windows, Macintosh and Linux)
NRSI staff, 2006-02-23
Download "CharisSILLit4.0.02.r1.zip", ZIP archive, 2MB [6381 downloads]
Charis SIL Literacy 4.0.02 font release - SIL PUA 4.1 (Windows and other)
NRSI staff, 2006-02-23
Download "CharisSILLit4.0.02.r1.exe", Windows application, 2MB [3172 downloads]

These fonts are identical to the main Charis SIL fonts, except that the default forms for 'a' and 'g' have been changed to those often preferred by literacy specialists - single-story 'a' and single-bowl 'g'. Note the following:

  • OpenType and Graphite features may not work as expected, and particularly those that interact with the Literacy Alternates feature.
  • Diacritic placement may not be ideal in some cases, although we've tried to be sure that this works in most situations.
  • This font is a one-off special version, and is not likely to be updated alongside future versions of Charis SIL.
  • This font is also released under the SIL Open Font License, but we strongly encourage you to use the main Charis SIL release as the source for any derivative versions.

If you encounter problems, your best solution is to use the main Charis SIL font release.

Installation and Use

If you are uncertain what to do with a .zip file, see Decompression Utilities and Downloading & Installation Tips. Within the archive is the font file and documentation.

Otherwise, if you downloaded the .exe package you can double-click on it to install the files in a temporary folder.

Note that these packages only include the font itself. If you want to use the font to type languages that use special non-European letters, or to type Cyrillic, then you may need a separate keyboard manager.


This font can be installed using standard font installation procedures for the given operating-system platform (Windows: put the font in Windows\Fonts. Macintosh: put the font in /Library/Fonts). There are no additional installation steps required to use Graphite-related functionality. Note that certain applications may not see the new font immediately. You may have to quit and restart the application for the font to become available.

For tips on using the GNU/Linux package, see the Gentium GNU/Linux page.

Release History

31 January, 2007 Official release of Charis SIL 4.100.

1 March, 2006 Release of Charis SIL Literacy 4.0.02 (Version 4.002).

31 January, 2006 Official release of Charis SIL 4.0.02 (Version 4.002).

9 December, 2005 Public beta 2 release of Charis SIL 4.0.02 (Version 4.002).

21 October, 2005 Public beta 1 release of Charis SIL 4.0.02 (Version 4.002).

Related Packages

Marking Tone in Unicode and the SIL Corporate PUA
Lorna A. Priest, 2007-02-01
Download "PitchContours.v1.pdf", Acrobat PDF document, 515KB [4928 downloads]

This document gives an overview of most of the ways you can mark tone in Unicode. It also outlines the encoding and implementation of the 9-level pitch contours which were just added to our SIL Unicode Roman fonts.

Some tools and resources for character input 2007-05-30; 43406 reads

Links to useful tools for character input.

IPA Unicode Windows Keyboards Lorna A. Priest, 2007-11-15; 40516 reads

This page contains keyboards created for typing in IPA data on Windows machines. Two keyboarding options are available: an IPA Keyman keyboard (and a UK variant) and keyboards which work through the Windows keyboarding system (MSKLC) for US and UK keyboard layouts.

TECkit Jonathan Kew, 2006-06-02; 11394 reads

TECkit is a low-level toolkit intended to be used by other applications that need to perform encoding conversions (e.g., when importing legacy data into a Unicode-based application).

Mapping Files Lorna A. Priest, 2007-06-26; 20704 reads

These are currently available TECkit mapping files. These mapping files were created for converting data to Unicode. Some, but not all, will also convert data from Unicode back to the legacy encoding. A few are Unicode to Unicode conversions. These mapping files are for use with TECkit applications.

Other Resources

 Search the SIL Ethnologue

 Free Adobe Acrobat Reader


© 2003-2007 SIL International, all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted elsewhere on this page.
Provided by SIL's Non-Roman Script Initiative. Contact us at nrsi@sil.org.