Italics

[jmuyskens]

Are italic versions in the works?

[frankrolf]

Yes, Italics are in the making.

[pauldhunt]

Frank, you may want to leave this open so that interested parties can see that this is a know issue and know the status of it.

[frankrolf]

Right, I have been thinking about this also.
I decided to close this because it is not inside the scope of the current project. I understand an issue to be more of a technical problem with the current project.
Italics are planned, on the roadmap and partly in production even, so that is all I can say at this point.

[ryanstewart]

I'd also vote for leaving this open. In general, closing an issue on Github means it's been resolved (either as a "we aren't going to do this" or a "we've done this"). Keeping it closed will encourage others to open the same issue. Plus, by keeping it open, it's more visible so people can keep tabs on it.

[frankrolf]

Yeah, but then we get millions of “+1” emails, as seen with Source Code Pro.
Can’t it mean “Yes, we are doing this?”

[ryanstewart]

I think you can unsubscribe from a specific comment thread if you want with the "Unsubscribe" button to the right.

And sure, it can mean whatever you want it to mean. It's just not the way other Github projects handle it. So you may start to see people creating a new issue for it. But if not, then that's a good indication that this way works!

[PeterBocan]

Any news on that? It's almost a year ago, guys...

[pauldhunt]

There is a ton of news, just not an official version yet. You can follow all the latest changes here:
https://github.com/pauldhunt/SourceCodePro/tree/PaulVersionCurrent

[adrientetar]

@pauldhunt I think you're confusing repos, this is Source Serif Pro here.:)

[pauldhunt]

doh! apparently i have SCP italics on the brain, which have also been taking plenty of time. font development can be a slow process, especially if you have multiple projects that require attention.

[miguelsousa]

@PeterBocan it's probably going to be another year until the italics materialize. @frankrolf has been sketching them out, but he has higher priority projects in his queue.

[PeterBocan]

Okay, thank you, @miguelsousa :)

[pstonier]

Any update on where these stand? I'm excited for how this is progressing.

[frankrolf]

Still in active development, however without a specific deadline.

[pstonier]

ok. Thank you.

[ghost]

Thank’you for the beautiful font!
(Btw, you can leave an issue open but prevent adding more comments to it by locking it, see here https://github.com/blog/1847-locking-conversations)

[frankrolf]

Thanks @andya9! Sorry for being grouchy here originally, still working on the Italics! :)

[ghost]

No probs, thank’you again 😄

[mbutterick]

You got monkeypatched!

[miguelsousa]

@mbutterick Utopia Italic derivative? Seems to work well together at first glance.

[adrientetar]

Utopia Italic derivative?

Yes, it's called Heuristica. Originally we were using it in the upright style too but people weren't very satisfied with it and I found Source Serif Pro to be a better fit for the documentation.
But it doesn't have italics.

Anyway. I think it works fairly well with Utopia here.

[frankrolf]

It’s nice to see how lacking italics inspire typographic creativity.
Eventually the Rust documentation will be able to use Source Serif throughout, but not just yet.

[dmoonfire]

I went another approach of using the lighter weight (in the epigraph and the line that starts with "As the sun touched the horizon, the dépa turned sharply") for italics. I was originally planning on switching to italics when they were available, but using the light for italics has been growing on me. I'm doing the same with Source Serif Pro also since they are on the same page on that site.

[frankrolf]

@dmoonfire Great! There are many ways for expressing typographic hierarchy other than using Italics. I am not apologizing here, just making a point for people saying Source Serif is “unusable” for its lack of Italics. They will come eventually!

[samboy]

Is there any way we can help fund the development of italics?

For people who want italics right now, one solution is to use Heuristica italic: https://sourceforge.net/projects/heuristica/ (Edit: If those fonts don’t work, use this link: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/heuristica — note that the license is slightly incorrect in the FontSquirrel download; it’s actually both the OFL and a bizarre license Adobe came up with when giving the Utopia font to the TeX User’s group )

[quantumgolem]

@samboy This works well. Thanks!

[frankrolf]

@samboy Thanks for that. It’s a good solution for the time being. There are several reasons why no Italics exist yet, but there are also may ways to get around that.

One thing I don’t understand – why does the FontSquirrel download say:
Heuristica – designed by Andrej Panov?
Heuristica is Utopia, which has been designed by Robert Slimbach.
(Not questioning Panov’s Cyrillic extension, but critical toward taking over original design credit)

[frankrolf]

Regarding this statement:

a bizarre license Adobe came up with when giving the Utopia font to the TeX User’s group

Utopia was probably one of the first open source fonts. There was no OFL at that point. Perhaps that’s why that license seems bizarre now, and perhaps it should be revisited (if that’s even possible).

[KyleAMathews]

Added Heuristica to NPM https://www.npmjs.com/package/typeface-heuristica

[samboy]

Since Frank is asking about Utopia’s license, here is the license under which Adobe made Utopia open source, in 2006:

Adobe Systems Incorporated ("Adobe") hereby grants to the TeX Users
Group and its members a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual license to
the typeface software for the Utopia Regular, Utopia Italic, Utopia Bold
and Utopia bold Italic typefaces, including Adobe Type 1 font programs
for each style (collectively, the "Software") as set forth below.

Adobe grants the TeX Users Group a license under its copyrights, to use,
reproduce, display and distribute the Software for any purpose and
without fee provided that the following copyright notice appears in all
whole and partial copies of the Software and provided that the following
trademark symbol and attribution appear in all unmodified copies of the
Software:

Copyright 1989, 1991 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
(alternatively, @1989, 1991 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.)
Utopia(R)
Utopia is either a registered trademark or trademark of Adobe Systems
Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. Used under
license.

Adobe also grants to the TeX Users Group a license to modify the
Software for any purpose and redistribute such modifications, for any
purpose and royalty-free, provided that the modified Software shall not
use the font name(s) or trademark(s), in whole or in part, unless
explicit written permission is granted by Adobe. This restriction
applies to all references stored in the Software for identification
purposes, such as the font menu name and other font description
fields. The TeX Users Group is also permitted to sublicense, and grant
such sublicensees the right to further sublicense, any or all the
foregoing rights through multiple tiers of distribution. The licenses
granted herein are granted in perpetuity and may not be terminated by
either party unless such termination is based on a breach of the terms
and conditions herein stated.

Adobe retains ownership of the copyright in the Software. The TeX Users
Group agrees that Adobe and its suppliers are the sole and exclusive
owners of all rights, title and interest, including all copyrights,
patents, trademarks, trade names, trade secrets and other intellectual
property rights in the Software. No title or ownership of the Software,
any copies of the Software, or the patent, copyright, trade secret,
trademark, trade name or other proprietary rights contained in the
Software is transferred to the TeX Users Group.

The Adobe trademarks shall not be used in advertising pertaining to the
distribution of the Software without express prior permission from
Adobe. Any such use shall be in accordance with the Adobe trademark
guidelines, available on the Adobe website at
http://www.adobe.com/misc/pdfs/TM GuideforThirdPartiesFinal.pdf.
If any portion of the Software is changed, it cannot be marketed under
Adobe's trademarks unless Adobe, in its sole discretion, approves by a
prior writing the quality of the resulting implementation.

The TeX Users Group shall have the right to evaluate the Software
provided by Adobe.

Then the TeX Users Group (TUG) gave all such rights, irrevocably and in perpetuity, to any and all interested parties.

Heuristica added a version of the OFL to the above license.

The original open sourcing of Utopia was done in the 1990-1992 timeframe to be part of the X windows system; this is also when Matthew Carter’s Bitstream Charter font was similarly donated (along with a version of Courier, one from IBM, another from Bitstream). An old Usenet posting summarizes all this: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/comp.fonts/ZrDhqYyvUU8/lEqqtgtv12EJ (Usenet, message ID EPPERLY.93Apr13101845@osnome.che.wisc.edu), with the original license for giving away Utopia:

%   Permission to use, reproduce, display and distribute the listed
%   typefaces is hereby granted, provided that the Adobe Copyright notice
%   appears in all whole and partial copies of the software and that the
%   following trademark symbol and attribution appear in all unmodified
%   copies of the software:
%
%           Copyright (c) 1989 Adobe Systems Incorporated
%           Utopia (R)
%           Utopia is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated
%
%   The Adobe typefaces (Type 1 font program, bitmaps and Adobe Font
%   Metric files) donated are:
%
%           Utopia Regular
%           Utopia Italic
%           Utopia Bold
%           Utopia Bold Italic

I do not think it was the intention of Adobe nor Bitstream to make these fonts available to anyone, anywhere; this was before the Internet was readily available outside of universities.

Personally, I am using Bitstream Charter for the time being. Both Charter and Source Serif Pro are based on the letters of Pierre-Simon Fournier; however, Charter has more slab-like serifs because it was designed to be a very compact font — Matthew Carter was using a typeface system with limited space for vector fonts that could only really handle sans typefaces, and designed Charter to work with that system; ironically, by the time Carter finished Charter, the programmers improved the system to allow for bigger typefaces.

Some Bitstream Charter downloads, since this font for some reason isn’t readily available on Google Fonts: http://practicaltypography.com/charter.html — There’s also the Charter derivative Charis SIL which has a slightly heavier weight than Charter and a greatly expanded character set: http://software.sil.org/charis/

[Rusty-UX]

Just wanted to chime in and say thanks for all the awesome work on this Frank, and looking forward to seeing Italics added in at some point.

[jrmiller82]

Any update on this?

[inferno986return]

Indeed, I two would like to know the current status on the italics. :-)

Source Serif Pro is a beautiful typeface, but bold alone only goes so far.

[frankrolf]

You can follow the current status of the italic extension in my private fork, as mentioned above:
https://github.com/frankrolf/source-serif-pro

[samboy]

@jrmiller82 @inferno986return RTF thread. As I posted above: For people who want italics right now, one solution is to use Heuristica italic: https://sourceforge.net/projects/heuristica/ (If those fonts don’t work, try this link: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/heuristica )

[jrmiller82]

@samboy No need to be hostile. The issue has been open for literally years, the thread doesn't really answer the question (until Frank's reply earlier today). Note: my request about an update was 2 months ago...

[samboy]

For people who want to get a sense of the hard work Frank is doing on the Italics, I just whipped out Fontforge and converted the current .ufo file in to a True Type italic font (with the required name change): https://github.com/samboy/NotAtAllOfficialFont I’m sure the final product will look better, but this lets people see how it’s coming along (no, I’m not going to do any weights except the regular weight — if you want more weights, download and install the free Fontforge, which will happily convert .ufo files in to .ttf files. Extra points if you make a GitHub repo with the converted .ttf files.)

In terms of how this looks, I personally prefer how “k” looks in Bitstream Charter italic. The upper left stroke in “z” is a little striking, but I’m used to how Bitstream Charter Italic makes the upper stroke of “z” be a mirror of the lower stroke, and I think the way Source Serif Italic handles it is an interesting, if slightly jarring, contrast for me.

I’m not going to apologize for my hostility. A lot of people have asked for Italics over the years multiple times.

While Italics are not available yet, one can either make unofficial Italic fonts from Frank’s UFO files with Fontforge, or use Heuristica/Utopia (or even Bitstream Charter at https://practicaltypography.com/charter.html) for Italics. Or, get a commercial font like one of Adobe’s many offerings, or something like https://practicaltypography.com/equity.html which includes webfont conversion permission in its font license.

[mrzool]

@jrmiller82:

The issue has been open for literally years [...] my request about an update was 2 months ago...

The statements above show how clueless you are about the time font development normally takes.

Depending on the design and designer, the size of the typeface family, the history and research involved, and the ebb and ow of the creative process, it’s not unheard of for a typeface family to take five or more years to create. See Tal Leming, who spent over six years making his sans serif family Balto.
Beyond the basic set of Latin alphabet characters (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, common accented characters, and punctuation), a serious typeface family may include international character sets, multiple numeral sets, ligatures, small caps, and multiple styles for text, titling, and captions. That can add up to hundreds of individual glyphs per style, which means you’re talking about potentially thousands of letterforms in total. That takes heaps of time, expertise, and testing […]
—Jason Santa Maria, On Web Typography

That is just to put things into perspective. Also, comments like "any updates on this?" may come across as rude and are definitely not helpful. Don't forget this is a free, open-source font.

@jrmiller82:

the thread doesn't really answer the question (until Frank's reply earlier today)

@frankrolf mentioned exactly the same thing and linked to the same private fork earlier in this very thread.

[jlarmstrongiv]

I’m not sure not really sure where to post this, so if it should be moved, just let me know.

First of all, thank you for creating Source Serif Pro! I love the font, and appreciate the hard work you all put into it 👍

I was checking out @frankrolf’s italics fork (https://github.com/frankrolf/source-serif-pro), and installed the tools to build the additional weights and italics drafts.

So far so good! The only thing that really jumps out at me is where crossbar of the A overlaps the stems (hopefully that’s the right type terminology; see the screenshot below). It would not surprise me if that’s so you can adjust the crossbar later if you decide to. However, I was wondering whether that can go ahead and be merged together in the fork, or if that’s just something I should fix on my own by learning enough font software to be dangerous and awaiting future iterations.

I would make an issue on the other repo, but they are not enabled. I also thought that a pull request without understanding your build tools wouldn’t really be all that helpful. So yeah. Anyway, keep up the great work! 🙂

[frankrolf]

@jlarmstrongiv Thanks for your concern, as you correctly guessed, drawing characters with overlaps is normal practice. They will be removed in the final release.
You will find overlaps in many more characters than A, and they may serve as a reminder that the fonts are unfinished.
When building the final fonts, we use checkoutlinesufo to remove such overlaps.

[inferno986return]

It's cool to learn more about font development. I look forward to the day Source Serif Pro Italic goes live, may even be a champagne moment.

[frankrolf]

The first public version of Italic styles supporting the AL-3 character set was released today:
https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-serif-pro/releases/tag/2.007R-ro/1.007R-it
https://blog.typekit.com/2018/08/16/source-serif-italics/

[inferno986return]

This is very exciting, I look forward to trying them out. :-D
If all goes to plan we get them in the next LibreOffice release.

[mnmiller78]

This is wonderful. Thank you so very much for your work bringing this to fruition for all to use. It’s a fantastic font. And I will aim to replace TNR with it wherever I can. All the best, Matt Miller

[samboy]

Thank you very much for making these italics available. They are very much worth the wait!

[miguelsousa]

I encourage everyone interested in getting some insight on the development process of the Italic to read Frank's blog post https://blog.typekit.com/2018/08/16/source-serif-italics/

[jrmiller82]

Awesome! Thank you! Now for true small caps!

[samboy]

@jrmiller82 Show them the money! The reason why Source Sans Pro has small caps is because Logos Bible Software paid to make it happen. Reference: https://blog.typekit.com/2012/11/02/source-sans-pro-adoption-and-development-to-date/

[jrmiller82]

Apparently it already has small caps; I just don't know where to download the small caps / make them work with Libre Office, Word, LaTeX etc... dunno why you can't download them as a separate font face.

[miguelsousa]

@jrmiller82 making separate Small Cap fonts requires additional work that we rather spend in something more fruitful. Please use #33 if you or anyone else wants to keep discussing this topic.