Junicode version 2.200

The Junicode font is primarily for scholars and students of the Middle Ages, but it serves users with a wide variety of interests. It tracks the development of the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative, with its wealth of specialized medieval characters, but it also provides many OpenType features that allow users to access MUFI characters in accessible ways.

Junicode is an extended font family, with five weights and five widths. This makes for a large number of font files, but the font also comes in a variable version, in which all the capabilities of the traditional “static” version—and more!—are packaged in just two files. The variable version is especially suitable for web use, but variable fonts can also be used in Adobe InDesign, LibreOffice, LuaTeX, and other text-processing apps (see the file JunicodeManual.pdf for details).

Junicode 2.200 features miscellaneous fixes and additions, and it also inaugurates a long-term program of adding glyphs for the benefit of the Ansund HTR (Handwritten Text Recognition) project, which is developing tools for the automated reading of medieval manuscripts. Of the additions made so far, the ones likely to be of greatest interest to users are two series of medieval capitals, available via features ss11[1] and ss11[2]. The first series consists of rustic capitals, often used for text in late ancient and early medieval times and for rubrics (headings) in the central Middle Ages. The second consists of Lombardic capitals, used in the central and later Middle Ages for what are now called drop caps. These capitals are designed to harmonize with Junicode to the greatest degree possible while remaining faithful to the medieval sources.