Fonts

Special fonts are required to display Menota texts. While normalised texts will display correctly with almost any font (except, possibly, for the "o with tail"), diplomatic texts and particularly facsimile texts will only display correctly with a MUFI conformant font installed on the computer. MUFI fonts, some of which are freeware, can be accessed from the MUFI font page. For the installation of a font, please follow the instructions for the operating system on your computer.

The Menota texts are presently encoded so that the computer will look for a MUFI font in this order: Andron Corpus, Andron Scriptor Web, Cardo, Alphabetum, Junicode, LeedsUni, Titus Cyberbit.

If none of the above fonts are available, the computer will continue looking for these fonts: Verdana, Tahoma, MS Sans Serif, Arial, Geneva, Helvetica.

All screenshots on this page are from the Safari browser on the Mac and should give you an indication of how the fonts will perform on your computer. Note that fonts may behave differently in other browsers and on other platforms (see the browser page).

Andron Corpus

Andron Corpus is a commercial, large-scale Unicode font, with regular, italics, semibold, semibold italics, etc. It can be purchased from the Andron font site (individual license from EUR 450).

Junicode

Junicode is also a large-scale Unicode font, but it has not yet been updated with all additions in MUFI v. 2.0. On the other hand, it is available free of charge and it has a good selection of italics, semibold and semibold italics. Since it has all characters in MUFI v. 1.0, it may have all necessary characters for many Menota texts.

Note that the shape of the capital thorn in Junicode may look a little unusual in an Old Nordic context. An Old Nordic variant is available as an OpenType feature in this font, but for web display this may not be easily accessed and displayed.

Andron Scriptor Web

Andron Scriptor Web is also a free font, downloadable from from the MUFI font site. It has all characters in MUFI v. 2.0. Andron Scriptor Web works fine until italics are required, which often is the case in diplomatic texts. Depending on your browser, italics may be displayed in another font (as shown here), or as derived italics, i.e. as Regular characters with a slant of 15 degrees.

Other MUFI fonts

The other MUFI fonts have not yet been updated with the MUFI v. 2.0 additions, and they only have Regular (not italics, etc.). On the other hand, they are available free of charge (or for a very modest fee), and they will in many cases perform very well. The screenshot below is in Cardo; other MUFI fonts should behave similarly.

Times (and other default fonts)

If no MUFI conformant font is installed on the computer, the text will be displayed in a default font, depending on the preference in your browser. On the normalised level, however, almost all characters will be displayed correctly, and for many texts, also on the diplomatic level. The facsimile level will not be easily readable.

The screenshot above, which is in Times, gives an indication of how a default font will behave. Characters missing in Times are, as far as possible, taken from other fonts, such as Lucida Grande. For example, the word "runnu" in the first line contains the small capital "R" and the small capital "N" from IPA Phonetics, but since these characters are missing in the installed version of Times, they have been supplied from Lucida Grande. The result is readable, if not pleasing. Characters in the Private Use Area can not be displayed at all, unless a MUFI conformant font is available. In this case, a "Last Resort" symbol is shown. On other browsers, a white square may be displayed, or a blank field. In the example above, the missing PUA characters include the ligature "aa", the combining "ur" symbol and the Insular "f". On the bright side, italics are displayed properly, since most default fonts include true italics.

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Opprettet 12 January 2007. Sist oppdatert 09.01.2008. Vevsjef. (Rediger)