desalph

• © 2002–2004 Kenneth R. Beesley (METAFONT sources)
• © 2021–2024 Fredrick R. Brennan (OpenType conversion, released under the SIL Open Font License v1.1)

This font was converted from METAFONT sources and released in this format with permission from Mr. Beesley.

Note that this font does not include punctuation or numerals. It is recommended that a font like Computer Modern Unicode be used for those to recreate the appearance of LaTeX default fonts.

The original METAFONT sources may be found in the mf directory. My OpenType conversion is found in the dist directory.

This font was made with FontForge and METAPOST. METAPOST was used to convert the METAFONT instructions into PostScript. The PostScript output of METAPOST, in the ps directory, was then imported glyph by glyph into FontForge (scripts/desalph.py). Unicode values were then assigned. (scripts/set_unicode_values.py)

The specimen was generated by the HarfBuzz debugging program hb-view.

The original README can be found at mf/desalph.txt.

Differences between the OpenType font and the METAFONT font

This is an OpenType conversion of a METAFONT font.

In order to bring this font up to date with current standards and practices, I made a number of minor changes from the METAFONT original.

• The representative characters for 𐐧 (U+10427) and 𐑏 (U+1044F) in the Unicode Standard do not match the ones in desalph.mf. I kept the desalph.mf shapes for these characters as OpenType Stylistic Alternates, residing in Style Set 1 (ss01). Note that these Stylistic Alternates are more common in historical handwritten Deseret alphabet texts, despite not being found in the printed books. The new glyph forms came into use after the publication of the books.
• I added two new glyphs for the handwritten form of 𐐦 (U+10426) and 𐑎 (U+1044E), and added them to Stylistic Set 1 as above.
• I slightly improved the shape of the curve in 𐐏 (U+1040F) and 𐐷 (U+10437).
• I noticed that 𐐁 (U+10401) and 𐐩 (U+10429) were horizontally flipped from how they were in the original Deseret alphabet texts. I think that this was a mistake in the original font, and corrected it.
• Spline overlaps were removed as they are considered improper in CFF-encoded OpenType fonts, although they would be fine in a CFF2-encoded font. Because there are no OpenType Variations, I decided there was no good reason to opt for CFF2-encoding, however.

Acknowledgement

Thanks once again to Kenneth R. Beesley for sending me the METAFONT sources of desalph, which I could find neither in the current CTAN (Comprehensive TeX Archive Network) nor in historical archives of it, which do not go back all the way to 2004.