Gentium Theme

[ancestral]

After getting bored with DejaVuSans, I decided to try an alternate font — Gentium.

You can now find Release 2 on the Add-on server, or attached to this post.

Gentium is part of a project designed to help produce readable publications for any derivation of Latin or Greek alphabets. It is a "free" font. (You can download the entire typeface at this link.)

Attached below is a zip containing the files you'll need to use the font in the game.


And here are some samples from in the game:

[Turuk]

Interesting, I like the way it looks except for the very small font used for the unit name, race, level, etc. in the attack screen. At a larger size it is much more readable.

I also support changing objectives to be more like icanhascheezburger.

[ancestral]

Interesting, I like the way it looks except for the very small font used for the unit name, race, level, etc. in the attack screen. At a larger size it is much more readable.

I also support changing objectives to be more like icanhascheezburger.

I agree on the small text… there is a .cfg file included that you can raise the text size with. I might just update it — in hindsight it is a little small…

Turuk: on that note…

*cough*:

[kitty]

That's a nice initiative! And Gentium is a beautiful font - I love me a well made renaissance antiqua!

I can imagine parts of the interface set in a antiqua very well (and in fact I would love it) but certain parts of small information aren't displayed well that way, as turuk already pointed out. And just inceasing those sizes isn't a serious option - we need small sizes available to structure information.
I suggest using two fonts - a antiqua like Gentium for bigger text sizes (dialogue, messages, headlines etc.) and a grotesk for all the small info and numer parts. We just need a nice free grotesk that workes well with Gentium - somebody knows one? Or perhaps use Linux Libertine which includes serif and sans serif variants designed to work harmonically together?

[torangan]

The reason why we have so few fonts available is a very simple one. There are nearly no fonts at all out there which support all the languages Wesnoth has translations for and have compatible licenses. If you want to replace DejaVu with something else, make sure that no language in use falls over the edge by the change. Of course, translations can always specify another font to be used. Extracting the provided glyph list can be a bit hard I guess but it is required for Wesnoth. (data/core/fonts.cfg the long lines with numbers.)

[Lord_Aether]

I also support changing objectives to be more like icanhascheezburger.

Me too.

I don't see the problem with the smaller text, however. It all looks very nice to me.

[Turuk]

I don't see the problem with the smaller text, however. It all looks very nice to me

I will agree, it does not look bad, but the issue comes from the fact that it is just small enough that some of the letters seem to push together and that creates a cramped, almost blurry effect in places. The text should be clear and easily readable even on the smaller panels given the varying window sizes, though I agree with Kitty that combining it with another font that would be suitable for the smaller text would be a good combination (if, of course, if fulfilled the hurdle posed by torangan).

[kitty]

The reason why we have so few fonts available is a very simple one. There are nearly no fonts at all out there which support all the languages Wesnoth has translations for and have compatible licenses. If you want to replace DejaVu with something else, make sure that no language in use falls over the edge by the change. Of course, translations can always specify another font to be used. Extracting the provided glyph list can be a bit hard I guess but it is required for Wesnoth. (data/core/fonts.cfg the long lines with numbers.)

You are right, that's an important point of course. Did you have a look at the Gentium homepage where it states that the explicit purpose of the font is "a typeface family designed to enable the diverse ethnic groups around the world who use the Latin and Greek scripts to produce readable, high-quality publications. It supports a wide range of Latin-based alphabets and includes glyphs that correspond to all the Latin ranges of Unicode."?
Since I'm not able to interpret the long lines with the numbers in the file you linked to, could you explain a bit more or have a look at the Glyph Inventory of Gentium?

[torangan]

I know that Gentium is supposed to support quite a lot of languages. But besides Latin and Greek we've got quite a few Cyrillic languages right now. Those numbers are just the unicode points supported. We've got a script written by Ott (old time contributor, long time no see) which parses the Status.txt for DejaVu. I don't remember how the lists for other fonts came to be, but I'd guess them to be outdated.

[ancestral]

One of the things I have noticed, with this, is that the fonts for the Addons, Multiplayer, and Languages window are not drawn in the same font as the rest of the choices from the main menu.

This is most evident with the list in the Multiplayer window, and also you can notice differences in the OK and Cancel buttons from the Multiplayer window and the Campaign window.

There must be some coding that is not drawing these windows consistently. I'm not sure what the other font is, but my suspicion is it's the default sans-serif for the computer system the user is running (could be Arial, Vera Sans, Helvetica, etc.)

See https://gna.org/bugs/index.php?13399 for more info.

[kitty]

I know that Gentium is supposed to support quite a lot of languages. But besides Latin and Greek we've got quite a few Cyrillic languages right now. Those numbers are just the unicode points supported. We've got a script written by Ott (old time contributor, long time no see) which parses the Status.txt for DejaVu. I don't remember how the lists for other fonts came to be, but I'd guess them to be outdated.

Ah, thanks for the explanation! Would it be possible to use Gentium (and a support font) for the latin and greek based alphabets and seperate fonts for the cyrillic and various asian alphabets? Or are there technical obstacles that would prevent such a distinction?

---

And for the friends of typography: What do you think of someting like Andika as a support font for Gentium (obviously Andika for small info, numbers etc and Gentium for all longer texts)? They would make the classical static/dynamic pairing.

[torangan]

Well, I'll try to write out what I know about the issue. All from memory, I'd probably have to spend quite some time looking at the code for sure answers.

Using other fonts should essentially be easy. Wesnoth always has a list of fonts and for each character it is looking up in a table wheter the first font in the list provides it, otherwise it checks the next. Translations can define the order in which fonts should be tested to make sure that they get an uniform look. (Asian font used for english characters as well for example.)

So the required task would be to import the font. Generate a list of supported characters through some script out of the provided information or even out of the font file (if someone knows how). Put it into the list of fonts. Update translations to specify the best order.

Using different fonts for different sizes would require some code changes I guess. Something like a list of fonts for normal to huge text and a seperate list for tiny sizes.

[ancestral]

Well, I'll try to write out what I know about the issue. All from memory, I'd probably have to spend quite some time looking at the code for sure answers.

Using other fonts should essentially be easy. Wesnoth always has a list of fonts and for each character it is looking up in a table wheter the first font in the list provides it, otherwise it checks the next. Translations can define the order in which fonts should be tested to make sure that they get an uniform look. (Asian font used for english characters as well for example.)

So the required task would be to import the font. Generate a list of supported characters through some script out of the provided information or even out of the font file (if someone knows how). Put it into the list of fonts. Update translations to specify the best order.

Using different fonts for different sizes would require some code changes I guess. Something like a list of fonts for normal to huge text and a seperate list for tiny sizes.

I have played with this myself. I know about the fonts.cfg file and how to specify which characters to use. I may be doing something incorrectly, but there's still a degree of hardwired-ness that I can't seem to workaround. The best way I found at the moment, sadly, is to just replace the font altogether.

I know mordante is busy working on the new GUI and theming system, so likely we'll need to wait until that is finished before we'll get good control over what text gets which font and what size.

Kitty: I like the idea of using Andika. It's a little more playful than your typical grotesque, though less noticeable at smaller sizes and yield to be very legible. I'd like to see how it looks in game personally. I've tried looking for other renaissance fonts like Gentium with similar quality and range or even wider range of international character support, but I have found none, unless you go with a free Garamond. The more I play with it, however, the more I like it. (I encourage anyone here to download above. Aside from some rare characters not being supported, it works like a charm.)

There are two versions of Gentium: the regular and the basic. The basic set includes different weights. I opted for book as it was a tad thicker, which I thought might help, though honestly at smaller sizes it probably matters little, so likely either would suffice. Would be nice, again if the theming system gets updated, to take advantage of the natural bold and italics of the font.

Some Cyrillic characters are present; I think Gentium itself has most of the Cyrillic characters while Gentium Basic has only Russian basically. Other Slavic languages would be excluded. (Asian and Indian languages aren't a part of it, but as far as I know it's absurd to think that you could even have a Western renaissance style of a Chinese font, for example )

[torangan]

You've found data/hardwired/fonts.cfg ?

[ancestral]

You've found data/hardwired/fonts.cfg ?

So I need to replace the hardwired file, then? Hmmm.