Slavonic Font Families

Vlad Dorosh describes this font: "This typeface is quite common in editions of the Synodal Printing Press of the end of the 19th to early 20th century. The point size of the original letters is quite large: the height of the lowercase letters was approx. 5 mm. This typeface was used in the altar Gospels, a large-format edition of the Akathists etc. There is a well known font, drawn from the same typeface: Evangelie (Orthodox). My version was redesigned to be closer to the original."

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Designed by Nikita Simmons in 1999, this font is a rough scan of the letters of the alphabet from a small printed "Azbuka" (Primer) that I have in my private collection. (In truth, I have never seen this typeface used elsewhere.) Unlike the font Vladimir (see below), which also comes from this same booklet, this font is not spacially conservative. I have intentionally left this font in a rough, crude state in order to retain its original "antique" appearance. – The font is not currently in distribution, but as soon as a Unicode standard for Slavonic becomes a reality, the font will be introduced for public distribution.

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Evangelie

Half Ustav

Orthodox

The original font was called Evangelie and has an internal note: "© 1994 SoftUnion Ltd. Created by A. Shishkin and N. Vsesvetskii". (It appears that these two people were the owners of the SoftUnion company, and were not involved in the design of the font.) It is still commercially available from ParaType in Moscow. It was subsequently reencoded to UCS (without alteration to the design) by V. Dorosh. and is now distributed freely at irmologion.ru.

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For a short time the font also appeared under the name "Half Ustav", with the internal note: "Revised and Adapted by D. Smirnov 1997. (C) Hamster." Apparently this font was withdrawn from distribution because of copyright problems.

This font was subsequently modified by the original designer (Nikolai Andrushchenko) and renamed Orthodox (internal note: "© 1994 SoftUnion Ltd © 2003-2006 NAAsoft N. Andrushchenko."). It has been expanded into a package of fonts which include variations for titling, drop caps, widely spaced (loose) text, numbers, etc. It is currently being freely distributed by orthonord.ru.

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AO Lenpoligraphmash, 1994. Reencoded to UCS by Vladislav V. Dorosh, and distributed freely at irmologion.ru.

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Vlad Dorosh describes this font: "Unlike Irmologion, the font "Irmos" accurately reproduces the typeface from the publications of the Synodal Printing Press at the beginning of the 20th century (e.g. the "Irmologion" of 1913). This is a redesign of my initial work (Irmologion), which, as in any "first attempt", was not successful. If you do not need to maintain compatibility with the font Irmologion, use Hirmos. The design of the new font is more professional, higher quality and reliable."

A variation of this font is under production by Aleksandr Andreev and Yuri Shardt, under the name "Hirmos Ponomar". It contains an internal note: "Converted to Unicode 5.1 Yuri Shardt, as part of the Ponomar Project. Additional Characters, including the Typicon Symbols, added by Yuri Shardt in 2009 and 2010."

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Vlad Dorosh describes this font: "This font created on the basis of fonts used in publications of the Synodal Printing Press in the early 20th century. The name is taken from the book from which it reproduces: the "Irmologion" published in 1913. The new UCS font is based on the older 13-font collection "Irmologion". This is my first font work, unprofessional and naive. In addition to numerous technical blemishes, the font also quite inaccurately reproduces the original printed typeface. During the creation of Irmologion I had neither the experience nor the technical resources required for quality reproduction of the pre-revolutionary font. Unfortunately, this rather premature effort has become a classic work and is used in many custom projects, so I have had to leave Irmologion on the web site. If you do not need to maintain compatibility with Irmologion, I recommend using a good analog of the Synodal typeface: "Hirmos". Please note: for typing this and all other UCS-fonts you are urged to download and install the "Irmologion-4" from "Programs". To write and edit the Church Slavonic texts only using the normal keyboard layout is possible, but very difficult. The package Irmologion-4 will allow you to do it much more conveniently and more correctly."

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(very complicated history – see remarks)

(irmologion.ru)

Vlad Dorosh describes this font: "The original typeface was used in the liturgical books of the last century, published by the presses of the Pochaev Lavra. Pochaevsk UCS was based on an accurate digital version of Pochaevsk. The names of different designers are indicated in different [earlier] versions of this font: OIDA (Orthodox Information Data Associates, year unknown); Nikita Simmons (1996); Archbishop John (1999). It can be assumed that the original font was made by OIDA, then altered by two other designers."

In reality, the font was originally called "Church Slavonic" and designed by Linotype AG in 1981 and digitized by Adobe Systems Incorporated in 1991. In the days when most type designers were naive and knew little about honoring and protecting copyrights, I was sent a copy of the font in 1991 by a private individual to use in typesetting a book. (I believe that he legally purchased it from Linotype AG. He is now deceased, and I have no way to verify the truth of the situation.) I (Nikita Simmons) was asked to expand the character set to include many missing characters and to re-encode the font. Of the existing characters, however, I made absolutely no alterations. After extensive reworking of the font, I named it "Pochaevsk". Over the next year I gave a copy to George Bedrin of OIDA (Orthodox Information Data Associates), and he possibly made a few alterations (although I cannot find any, and I believe that OIDA has ceased to distribute the font). [I am completely unaware of the role that Archbishop John plays in this, and since I cannot see any alterations in the font design, I can only conclude that he made no changes.] Somehow a copy of Pochaevsk was given or sold to Vladislav Dorosh and it is now being distributed in UCS-8 encoding. The irmologion.ru version includes almost all of the original character additions of Nikita Simmons, and Vlad Dorosh has added the necessary composite characters to adhere to UCS-8 standards. — In summary, the font Pochaevsk is a cummulative work of a few designers and redesigners.

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© Alexey Isaev, 1997-1999. This font is based on the typefaces of the Moscow Synodal Typografiia. The height of the capital letters is very low, making this an economical typeface if one has to squeeze a lot of lines of text onto the page. There appears to be no distribution of this interesting font. (See also Vladimir by Nikita Simmons.)

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(Copyright (c) Vladislav V. Dorosh, Calmius Software, 2003. All rights reserved.) Vlad Dorosh describes this font: "This typeface is quite common in editions of the Synodal Printing Press of the end of the 19th to early 20th century, and is hopefully well known to today's singers and readers. This typeface is used, for example, by the modern Patriarchal reprints (published by the Moscow Patriarchate) of both of the Triodia, the Chasoslov (Horologion, Book of Hours), the Hieraticon (Priest's Service Book), the Typicon and many other publications."

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An internal note states: "Maked by Vladimir Rygkov, Alexey Shadrin. Reencoded to UCS by Vladislav V. Dorosh. 2001". It has a pleasant bold design which is slightly crude, making it look like an antique-style font. (I suspect it was scanned and left as-is, without being clean up.) Sadly, the font is no longer in distribution and does not seem to be available on the internet.

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Commercial fonts (package):

OldSlavonicLS
SlavonicLS
BookSlavonic
[NewSlavonicFull]
[NewSlavonicLite]
SlavonicExtras

Commercial package of fonts sold by Linguists Software. (The designs for Old Slavonic are good, but the Church Slavonic fonts are outmoded. NewSlavonic Lite and Full are listed in the Civil Script family.) SAMPLES:

OldSlavonicLS is a reproduction of a 19th century typeface designed for printing Paleoslavonic texts. However, it is has been updated to include all the diacritical marks and later characters used in Church Slavonic.

SlavonicLS is the same as OldSlavonicLS, except that the i and n are replaced with the modern form of these characters for those users who prefer those forms.
SlavonicExtras contains rarely used Slavonic characters complementing the other fonts.

BookSlavonic reproduces the more common form of Slavonic encountered in liturgical and other texts, and is optimized for laser-printing (at 300 d.p.i.).

ChurchSlavonicLS is visually quite similar to BookSlavonic, but it includes the faint sloping calligraphic flavor of the alphabet seen in books today and would therefore be better for those who have 600 dpi or better printers.

Designed by Nikita Simmons in 2000 as a low-height variant of Pochaevsk, this font economizes on vertical space, making it possible to have more lines of text on the page. (See a similar font "Synod" above.) The capital letters were heavily redesigned, based on a small printed "Azbuka" (Primer) that I have in my private collection. (In truth, I have never seen this typeface used elsewhere.) – The font is not currently in distribution, but as soon as a Unicode standard for Slavonic becomes a reality, the font will be introduced for public distribution.

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