This page provides a guide to the pre-release testing of the Numismatica font. Participation in the test is voluntary and open to all interested parties at all levels of computer expertise. You can download an RTF version of this guide.
Numismatica is a computer font of archaic and classical Greek letterforms, plus those symbols needed to catalog coins. The font is the result of a team effort and you are invited to recommend changes to the font to help make it complete and useful to scholars, numismatists, dealers, collectors - in short, anyone needing to communicate electronically about ancient Greek coin legends. The production version will be distributed for free on the Internet.
The 8-bit version of the font has been created as a symbol-encoded font, as opposed to a text font, for two reasons. First, the many variant letterforms of some archaic Greek letters require several variants of the same character in an inscription. Secondly, some word processors treat symbol fonts as a special case, allowing their characters to be selected from a utility in the program.
The font is available in both Adobe Type 1 and Truetype formats with versions tailored for the Macintosh and Windows. The font only has a normal weight font. Neither bold, italic nor bold-italic versions are planned since they are not appropriate for representing the original Greek characters as they appear on coins.
Unix users are invited to adapt these fonts and let us know of their results. The font has been specifically designed with TeX and LaTeX in mind.
Please copy and paste this text into an email message and return it with your answers to Chris Hopkins.
Operating system: ____________________ Version: __________
Word processor software: _____________ Version: __________
Browser software: ____________________ Version: __________
Other application: ____________________ Version: __________
Which font did you install? Type 1 ___ Truetype: ___
Printer manufacturer: _________________ Model: ____________
Type printer: Dot matrix ___ Inkjet ___ LaserJet ___ Postscript ___
Other: ____________________________
In your word processing software, does the font appear properly on-screen in both print-preview and draft views at all point sizes? Explain any anomalies.
Does the font appear properly on the printed page? Mention any anomalies.
Go to the web page at numismatica_html_test.htm and view the characters. Do all characters and symbols appear properly?
Print the web page. Do the characters and symbols appear properly on the printed page?
What are the other applications in which you used Numismatica font? Was it successful? Please describe any special installation procedures required.
Does the font include all the archaic and classical Greek letterforms used on coins? If not, which characters are missing? On what coins do these characters appear?
Are the included letterforms correctly designed? If not, which need redesign?
This page last updated 06 Mar 2019