BabelStone Fonts

BabelStone Roman

Description

BabelStone Roman is a Unicode serif font covering the Latin script. It was designed primarily for use in phonetic transcription of Tangut, but may be useful for other purposes. The font is derived from Doulos SIL version 5.000, but restricted to the Latin script, with a number of additional characters included. The current version of the font supports Unicode 14.0 (released 14 September 2021), and covers all 1,374 Latin script characters defined in Unicode 13.0, as well as 30 of the 101 Latin script characters defined in Unicode 14.0.

NB At present the inter-character spacing and kerning of the font is rather poor, but I plan to improve this when I have time.

OpenType Features

Script	Language	Features	Explanation
Latin <latn>	Default <dflt>	Glyph Composition Decomposition <ccmp>	Maps all canonically decomposed character sequences (NFD) to their corresponding precomposed glyphs (NFC). Maps all Unicode Named Character Sequences to precomposed glyphs. Maps character sequences used for phonetic transcription and transliteration to precomposed glyphs.
Latin <latn>	Default <dflt>	Mark Positioning <mark>	Adjusts positions of combining marks for two characters when both characters are lowercase (this does not seem to work, so maybe I am using the wrong feature).

Script

Language

Features

Explanation

Latin <latn>

Default <dflt>

Glyph Composition Decomposition <ccmp>

Maps all canonically decomposed character sequences (NFD) to their corresponding precomposed glyphs (NFC).

Maps all Unicode Named Character Sequences to precomposed glyphs.

Maps character sequences used for phonetic transcription and transliteration to precomposed glyphs.

Latin <latn>

Default <dflt>

Mark Positioning <mark>

Adjusts positions of combining marks for two characters when both characters are lowercase (this does not seem to work, so maybe I am using the wrong feature).

Character Repertoire

BabelStone Roman includes a total of 3,011 Unicode characters, including all 1,374 Latin script characters defined in Unicode 13.0, as well as 30 of the 101 Latin script characters defined in Unicode 14.0.

Unicode Block	Range	Coverage	Notes
Basic Latin	00000..0007F	97 out of 128 characters
Latin-1 Supplement	00080..000FF	96 out of 128 characters
Latin Extended-A	00100..0017F	128 out of 128 characters
Latin Extended-B	00180..0024F	208 out of 208 characters
IPA Extensions	00250..002AF	96 out of 96 characters
Spacing Modifier Letters	002B0..002FF	80 out of 80 characters
Combining Diacritical Marks	00300..0036F	108 out of 112 characters
Greek and Coptic	00370..003FF	40 out of 135 characters
Cyrillic	00400..004FF	4 out of 256 characters	Letters used for tones in old Zhuang orthography
Combining Diacritical Marks Extended	01AB0..01AFF	17 out of 17 characters
Phonetic Extensions	01D00..01D7F	111 out of 128 characters
Phonetic Extensions Supplement	01D80..01DBF	64 out of 64 characters
Combining Diacritical Marks Supplement	01DC0..01DFF	58 out of 63 characters
Latin Extended Additional	01E00..01EFF	256 out of 256 characters
General Punctuation	02000..0206F	101 out of 111 characters
Superscripts and Subscripts	02070..0209F	42 out of 42 characters
Currency Symbols	020A0..020CF	32 out of 32 characters
Combining Diacritical Marks for Symbols	020D0..020FF	7 out of 33 characters
Letterlike Symbols	02100..0214F	32 out of 80 characters
Number Forms	02150..0218F	60 out of 60 characters
Arrows	02190..021FF	19 out of 112 characters
Mathematical Operators	02200..022FF	40 out of 256 characters
Miscellaneous Technical	02300..023FF	29 out of 256 characters
Control Pictures	02400..0243F	1 out of 39 characters
Geometric Shapes	025A0..025FF	4 out of 96 characters
Miscellaneous Symbols	02600..026FF	45 out of 256 characters
Dingbats	02700..027BF	6 out of 192 characters
Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A	027C0..027EF	4 out of 48 characters
Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows	02B00..02BFF	4 out of 253 characters
Latin Extended-C	02C60..02C7F	32 out of 32 characters
Supplemental Punctuation	02E00..02E7F	83 out of 83 characters
Modifier Tone Letters	0A700..0A71F	32 out of 32 characters
Latin Extended-D	0A720..0A7FF	193 out of 193 characters
Latin Extended-E	0AB30..0AB6F	60 out of 60 characters
Private Use Area	0E000..0F8FF	394 out of 6,400 characters	E021..E0FF: Mirrored clones of 0021..00FF E121..E1FF: Rotated clones of 0021..00FF F002..F032: Various Latin letter variants and ligatures
Alphabetic Presentation Forms	0FB00..0FB4F	7 out of 58 characters
Combining Half Marks	0FE20..0FE2F	4 out of 16 characters
Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms	0FF00..0FFEF	103 out of 225 characters
Specials	0FFF0..0FFFF	1 out of 5 characters
Ancient Symbols	10190..109CF	14 out of 14 characters
Latin Extended-F	10780..107BF	12 out of 57 characters
Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols	10190..109CF	254 out of 996 characters	Latin Bold, Italic, Bold-Italic, Fraktur, and Fraktur Bold letters
Latin Extended-G	1DF00..1DFFF	5 out of 31 characters
Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement	1F100..1F1FF	6 out of 200 characters	Creative Commons symbols
Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs	1F300..1F5FF	1 out of 768 characters
Transport and Map Symbols	1F680..1F6FF	1 out of 117 characters
Symbols for Legacy Computing	1FB00..1FBFF	10 out of 212 characters	Segmented digits for 0..9

Ligatures

BabelStone Roman supports a wide range of ligatures for Latin letters, in particular those used in Roman inscriptions. To generate the ligature insert a Zero Width Joiner (ZWJ) character (U+200D) between the letters to be ligatured, as shown in the table below. As the Unicode Standard does not provide a mechanism for displaying more than one ligature glyph form for the same sequence of letters, I have had to improvise when there are multiple attested ligature forms. In such cases, the font requires a single ZWJ for the first ligature form, two ZWJ characters for the second ligature form, and three ZWJ characters for the third ligature form, etc., as shown in the table.

Sequence	Ligature	Notes
a ZWJ e	a‍e
c ZWJ t	c‍t
f ZWJ f	f‍f
f ZWJ i	f‍i
f ZWJ l	f‍l
f ZWJ f ZWJ i	f‍f‍i
f ZWJ f ZWJ l	f‍f‍l
o ZWJ e	o‍e
s ZWJ t	s‍t
ſ ZWJ t	ſ‍t
A ZWJ B	A‍B
A ZWJ D	A‍D
A ZWJ ZWJ D	A‍‍D
A ZWJ E	A‍E
A ZWJ F	A‍F
A ZWJ G	A‍G
A ZWJ H	A‍H
A ZWJ L	A‍L
A ZWJ M	A‍M
A ZWJ ZWJ M	A‍‍M
A ZWJ N	A‍N
A ZWJ ZWJ N	A‍‍N
A ZWJ P	A‍P
A ZWJ R	A‍R
A ZWJ T	A‍T
A ZWJ T ZWJ V	A‍T‍V
A ZWJ T ZWJ V ZWJ R	A‍T‍V‍R
A ZWJ V	A‍V
A ZWJ ZWJ V	A‍‍V
A ZWJ V ZWJ E	A‍V‍E
A ZWJ ZWJ V ZWJ E	A‍‍V‍E
A ZWJ V ZWJ G	A‍V‍G
A ZWJ V ZWJ R	A‍V‍R
A ZWJ X	A‍X
B ZWJ B	B‍B
B ZWJ E	B‍E
B ZWJ I	B‍I
B ZWJ R	B‍R
B ZWJ T	B‍T
C ZWJ E	C‍E
C ZWJ I	C‍I
C ZWJ O	C‍O
C ZWJ V	C‍V
C ZWJ ZWJ V	C‍‍V
D ZWJ D	D‍D
D ZWJ E	D‍E
D ZWJ ZWJ E	D‍‍E
D ZWJ ZWJ ZWJ E	D‍‍‍E
D ZWJ I	D‍I
D ZWJ I ZWJ K	D‍I‍K
D ZWJ O	D‍O
D ZWJ R	D‍R
E ZWJ D	E‍D
E ZWJ ZWJ D	E‍‍D
E ZWJ ZWJ F	E‍‍F
E ZWJ I	E‍I
E ZWJ L	E‍L
E ZWJ M	E‍M
E ZWJ M ZWJ I	E‍M‍I
E ZWJ N	E‍N
E ZWJ N ZWJ T	E‍N‍T
E ZWJ N ZWJ ZWJ T	E‍N‍‍T
E ZWJ N ZWJ T ZWJ E	E‍N‍T‍E
E ZWJ Q	E‍Q
E ZWJ R	E‍R
E ZWJ ZWJ R	E‍‍R
E ZWJ R ZWJ I	E‍R‍I
E ZWJ T	E‍T
E ZWJ ZWJ T	E‍‍T
E ZWJ ZWJ ZWJ T	E‍‍‍T
F ZWJ E	F‍E
F ZWJ I	F‍I
G ZWJ A	G‍A
G ZWJ O	G‍O
G ZWJ V ZWJ S	G‍V‍S
H ZWJ A	H‍A
H ZWJ E	H‍E
H ZWJ I	H‍I
H ZWJ R	H‍R
H ZWJ Y	H‍Y
I ZWJ B	I‍B
I ZWJ D	I‍D
I ZWJ E	I‍E
I ZWJ H ZWJ S	I‍H‍S
I ZWJ L	I‍L
I ZWJ M	I‍M
I ZWJ M ZWJ A	I‍M‍A
I ZWJ M ZWJ A ZWJ E	I‍M‍A‍E
I ZWJ M ZWJ E	I‍M‍E
I ZWJ N	I‍N
I ZWJ N ZWJ E	I‍N‍E
I ZWJ N ZWJ T	I‍N‍T
I ZWJ O	I‍O
I ZWJ R	I‍R
I ZWJ T	I‍T
I ZWJ T ZWJ E	I‍T‍E
I ZWJ V	I‍V
K ZWJ L	K‍L
L ZWJ A ZWJ V	L‍A‍V
L ZWJ E	L‍E
L ZWJ I	L‍I
L ZWJ ZWJ I	L‍‍I
L ZWJ L	L‍L
L ZWJ X	L‍X
M ZWJ A	M‍A
M ZWJ ZWJ A	M‍‍A
M ZWJ ZWJ ZWJ A	M‍‍‍A
M ZWJ A ZWJ E	M‍A‍E
M ZWJ A ZWJ R	M‍A‍R
M ZWJ A ZWJ T	M‍A‍T
M ZWJ A ZWJ X ZWJ I ZWJ M	M‍A‍X‍I‍M
M ZWJ B	M‍B
M ZWJ E	M‍E
M ZWJ I	M‍I
M ZWJ ZWJ I	M‍‍I
M ZWJ M	M‍M
M ZWJ N	M‍N
M ZWJ N ZWJ I	M‍N‍I
M ZWJ N ZWJ I ZWJ B	M‍N‍I‍B
M ZWJ P	M‍P
N ZWJ A	N‍A
N ZWJ ZWJ A	N‍‍A
N ZWJ A ZWJ E	N‍A‍E
N ZWJ A ZWJ T	N‍A‍T
N ZWJ A ZWJ T ZWJ I	N‍A‍T‍I
N ZWJ D	N‍D
N ZWJ E	N‍E
N ZWJ F	N‍F
N ZWJ I	N‍I
N ZWJ ZWJ I	N‍‍I
N ZWJ I ZWJ N	N‍I‍N
N ZWJ I ZWJ ZWJ N	N‍I‍‍N
N ZWJ K	N‍K
N ZWJ N	N‍N
N ZWJ N ZWJ I	N‍N‍I
N ZWJ N ZWJ ZWJ I	N‍N‍‍I
N ZWJ T	N‍T
N ZWJ ZWJ T	N‍‍T
N ZWJ ZWJ ZWJ T	N‍‍‍T
N ZWJ T ZWJ E	N‍T‍E
N ZWJ T ZWJ H	N‍T‍H
N ZWJ T ZWJ I	N‍T‍I
O ZWJ C	O‍C
O ZWJ E	O‍E
O ZWJ G	O‍G
O ZWJ N	O‍N
O ZWJ R	O‍R
O ZWJ T	O‍T
Q ZWJ V	Q‍V
O ZWJ V	O‍V
P ZWJ E	P‍E
P ZWJ H	P‍H
P ZWJ H ZWJ I	P‍H‍I
P ZWJ H ZWJ R	P‍H‍R
P ZWJ I	P‍I
P ZWJ L	P‍L
P ZWJ R	P‍R
P ZWJ T	P‍T
P ZWJ ZWJ T	P‍‍T
R ZWJ A	R‍A
R ZWJ D	R‍D
R ZWJ E	R‍E
R ZWJ ZWJ E	R‍‍E
R ZWJ H	R‍H
R ZWJ I	R‍I
R ZWJ R	R‍R
R ZWJ V	R‍V
S ZWJ E	S‍E
T ZWJ A	T‍A
T ZWJ E	T‍E
T ZWJ ZWJ E	T‍‍E
T ZWJ F	T‍F
T ZWJ H	T‍H
T ZWJ H ZWJ E	T‍H‍E
T ZWJ H ZWJ I	T‍H‍I
T ZWJ I	T‍I
T ZWJ R	T‍R
T ZWJ ZWJ R	T‍‍R
T ZWJ V ZWJ S	T‍V‍S
V ZWJ A	V‍A
V ZWJ A ZWJ E	V‍A‍E
V ZWJ A ZWJ L	V‍A‍L
V ZWJ A ZWJ L ZWJ E	V‍A‍L‍E
V ZWJ B	V‍B
V ZWJ E	V‍E
V ZWJ F	V‍F
V ZWJ I	V‍I
V ZWJ I ZWJ V	V‍I‍V
V ZWJ L	V‍L
V ZWJ M	V‍M
V ZWJ ZWJ M	V‍‍M
V ZWJ N	V‍N
V ZWJ N ZWJ T	V‍N‍T
V ZWJ P	V‍P
V ZWJ R	V‍R
V ZWJ S	V‍S
V ZWJ ZWJ S	V‍‍S
V ZWJ T	V‍T
V ZWJ V	V‍V
V ZWJ X	V‍X
X ZWJ A	X‍A
X ZWJ V	X‍V
X ZWJ X	X‍X
X ZWJ X ZWJ X	X‍X‍X
Ʌ ZWJ E	Ʌ‍E
Ꟶ ZWJ E	Ꟶ‍E	Also F030 
Ꟶ ZWJ I	Ꟶ‍I	Also F031 
Ꟶ ZWJ R	Ꟶ‍R	Also F032 

Tombstone of Tadia Vallaunius and Tadius Exuperatus (RIB 369)

Image credit: Verdun Howells (@ServiliusPulex) on Twitter

Transcription of above tombstone using BabelStone Roman (24 points)

Transcription of the tombstone of Tadia Vallaunius and Tadius Exuperatus (RIB 369) using BabelStone Roman at 24 points

Combining Cedilla for Latvian and Marshallese

Latvian uses a comma-shaped glyph for L/l and N/n with combining cedilla (U+0327), whereas Marshallese uses a cedilla glyph for these letters. Despite several attempts to provide a mechanism to support both Latvian and Marshallese usage in Unicode (see for example WG2 N4456), there is currently no standardzed mechanism for supporting both Latvian and Marshallese usage in a single font. BabelStone Roman supports both Latvian and Marshallese usage by using the Combining Grapheme Joiner (CGJ) character (U+034F) before the combining cedilla to display it as a cedilla glyph, as shown in the table below.

Latvian		Marshallese
Sequence	Result	Sequence	Result
L Cedilla	Ļ	L CGJ Cedilla	L͏̧
N Cedilla	Ņ	N CGJ Cedilla	N͏̧
l Cedilla	ļ	l CGJ Cedilla	l͏̧
n Cedilla	ņ	n CGJ Cedilla	n͏̧

Variation Sequences

BabelStone Roman supports a number of unofficial variation sequences for the characters listed in the table below. The character plus VS1 (U+FE00) produces the same glyph as for the character by itself, whereas the character plus VS2 (U+FE01) produces the variant glyph form shown. Please note that none of these variation sequences are defined in the Unicode Standard, and they will not work for any other font.

Code Point	Character	Character Name	+ VS1	+VS2	Notes
A764	Ꝥ	Latin Capital Letter Thorn with Stroke	Ꝥ︀	Ꝥ︁	See WG2 N4836
A765	ꝥ	Latin Small Letter Thorn with Stroke	ꝥ︀	ꝥ︁	See WG2 N4836
1019C	𐆜	Ascia Symbol	𐆜︀	𐆜︁	See WG2 N5038
101A0	𐆠	Greek Symbol Tau Rho	𐆠︀	𐆠︁	See WG2 N5040

Version History

Version	Date	Coverage	Notes
8.000	2015-02-08	33 blocks, 1,834 characters	First public release. Supports Unicode 8.0.
8.001	2015-02-08	34 blocks, 2,022 characters	Added 188 characters. Increased size of superscript and subscript letters and digits.
8.002	2015-05-04	35 blocks, 2,080 characters	Added 58 characters. Increased inter-letter spacing.
8.003	2015-11-22	35 blocks, 2,080 characters	Add support for tone contours.
9.000	2016-05-16	35 blocks, 2,081 characters	Add 1 character for Unicode 9.0.
9.002	2016-09-29	35 blocks, 2,081 characters	Add additional precomposed glyphs.
9.005	2016-12-08	36 blocks, 2,101 characters	Various changes and additions.
9.006	2018-02-28	36 blocks, 2,105 characters	Various changes and additions.
13.000	2020-03-08	45 blocks, 2,971 characters	Additions to support all Latin letters in Unicode 13.0. Addition of 200+ ligatures.
13.001	2020-03-25	45 blocks, 2,971 characters	Several glyph fixes, and adjusted vertical position for all modifier letters.
13.002	2020-07-05	45 blocks, 2,971 characters	Fixed glyph errors for 'm' with tilde and 'm' with candrabindu (glyphs were swapped).
13.004	2020-10-19	46 blocks, 2,980 characters	Various.
13.005	2020-11-03	47 blocks, 2,981 characters	Multiocular ꙮ Special ꙮ Edition!
13.006	2020-12-06	47 blocks, 2,981 characters	Letter spacing, kerning, and ligature fixes.
14.000	2021-11-08	49 blocks, 3,011 characters	Added 13 Latin Extended-D additions for Unicode 14.0, and a few Latin Extended-F and G additions for Unicode 14.0. Corrected glyph shape of U+A66E Cyrillic Letter Multiocular O to follow the manuscript evidence.
14.001	2022-01-25	49 blocks, 3,011 characters	Added additional Roman ligatures.

Download

BabelStone Roman is licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, which means you are free to use it for personal or commercial purposes, and to redistribute it by itself or as part of a free or commercial software package, just as long as you do not sell the font on its own. The license also allows you to modify the font in any way you like, as long as the modified font does not use "BabelStone" in its name. Please read the license for details.

For use on your computer or mobile device please download and install the TTF file by clicking on "Download BabelStone Roman" below. The WOFF and WOFF2 files are for web hosting use only, and are not required by most users.

Download BabelStone Roman [WOFF, WOFF2] v. 14.000 (2021-11-08)

If you find this font useful, please consider making a small donation to help support the continued development of BabelStone fonts by clicking on the PayPal link below:

paypal.me/babelstone

BabelStone Fonts