Jena1330 – A medieval textura font

Jena1330 is a digital font, based on a medieval textura as used by the main writer of the Jenaer Liederhandschrift manuscript (Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Jena; http://archive.thulb.uni-jena.de/hisbest/receive/HisBest_cbu_00008190) around 1330. The font software is Copyright ⓒ 2012, Gereon Kaiping (anaphory@yahoo.de) and is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1, with Reserved Font Name Jena1330. This implies, among other things, that the font software can be freely used. The full text of the license is copied below.

Getting Jena

Jena1330 is available in a few different formats.

Notes

Jena1330 was made with FontForge and is available as source code in FontForge plaintext directory (.sfdir) format. To build a version of Jena1330 that can be used with LaTeX, run ./BuildAndInstall in its directory. This will create a work/ directory containing all files needed to use the font in LaTeX as well as compiling an example LaTeX document showing Jena1330 in action. The BuildAndInstall script requires some additional software to do its job.

Alternatively, FontForge can be used to convert the sfdir directory into other font formats, such as otf.

Preview

A pdf preview is available under Jena1330.pdf. Furthermore, if your browser supports web fonts, the following text should show an example text, a verse from a song by Heinrich Frauenlob of Meissen, typeset in Jena1330. The example text is taken from the Jenaer Liederhandschrift. The author, Heinrich Frauenlob of Meissen, has been dead for more than 70 years, so the text is in the public domain.

If your browser does not support the init, medi and fina OpenType tables for latin script (or applies the substitutions independently of the position of the character in the word), you will see problems with distinct initial, medial and final forms, in particular visible in words like “was” (which should not display as “waſ”) and “ſin” (which should not display as “sin”). The substitution is however correctly implemented by the font. This example uses the same current OpenType version of the font as available above.

How it looks in the original

Do kvninc alexander myt
vůlkomner macht. Die
lant ir vacht. Biz tzv̊ dem parady-
se. Jn so hoer wise. Wart ym ge-
geben eyn edel steyn kleyne vnde
ouch tzv̊ bryse. Man heiz den kv-
ninc daz er den steyn myt laste
wider vůge. San wart geleyt
der steyn of eyner wage symz. Mit
lastes pymz. Solde man in vber-
mangen. Swaz man mv̊chte ir-
langen. Daz lest⁠lich was daz was
eyn nicht kegen des steynes spange.

How it looks in the original

Eyn wiser warf eyn dach von erden
of den steyn gevůge Tzv̊ hant
was Al sin last gelegen. Diz merke
hoch gehegeter dhegen. Kein wider-
wegen. Din mac gephlegen. Der wile
daz leben hat heiles segen. wirt aber
div erde ein dach dir stegen. So wirt
din mast. Jn hoher last. Ein pillich
vber trůge.

These images are taken from the Projekt Digitale Liederhandschrift of the Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Jena. The images are property of the Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek in Jena and are used with permission.


SIL OPEN FONT LICENSE
Version 1.1 - 26 February 2007

PREAMBLE

The goals of the Open Font License (OFL) are to stimulate worldwide
development of collaborative font projects, to support the font
creation efforts of academic and linguistic communities, and to
provide a free and 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/or sold with any software provided that any reserved
names are not used by derivative works. The fonts and derivatives,
however, cannot be released under any other type of license. The
requirement for fonts to remain under this license does not apply to
any document created using the fonts or their derivatives.

DEFINITIONS

"Font Software" refers to the set of files released by the Copyright
Holder(s) under this license and clearly marked as such. This may
include source files, build scripts and
documentation.

"Reserved Font Name" refers to any names specified as such after the
copyright statement(s).

"Original Version" refers to the collection of Font Software
components as distributed by the Copyright Holder(s).

"Modified Version" refers to any derivative made by adding to,
deleting, or substituting -- in part or in whole -- any of the
components of the Original 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
Original or Modified Versions, may be sold by itself.

2) Original or Modified Versions of the Font Software may be bundled,
redistributed and/or 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) unless explicit written permission is granted by the
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primary font name as presented to the users.

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Software shall not be used to promote, endorse or advertise any
Modified Version, except to acknowledge the contribution(s) of the
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permission.

5) The Font Software, modified or unmodified, in part or in whole,
must be distributed entirely under this license, and must not be
distributed under any other license. The requirement for fonts to
remain under this license does not apply to any document created using
the Font Software.

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This license becomes null and void if any of the above conditions are
not met.

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(http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)