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Welcome to Computers and Writing Systems

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The Non-Roman Script Initiative

The NRSI is a department of SIL International, whose task is to provide assistance, research and development for SIL International and its partners to support the use of non-Roman and complex scripts in language development.

Our vision is that language communities are effectively using their preferred writing system on computers without technical barriers.

Google Web Fonts

Andika and Gentium Basic are now available for use on web pages via the Google Web Fonts service! This makes it very easy for you to use on your website. For more information on this and other ways to use SIL fonts on web sites see Using SIL Fonts on Web Pages.

Recent additions and updates

Ukelele John Brownie, 2012-02-14; 703788 reads

Ukelele is a Unicode keyboard layout editor for Mac OS X versions 10.2 and later. Version 2.1.10 is available for download, and can be used on Mac OS X 10.4 and later. The previous stable release of Ukelele, version 1.8.4 (universal binary, for Mac OS X 10.2 and later) is still available for download. This version works on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) to 10.7 (Lion).

Unicode Character Properties Excel Workbook Peter Constable and Bob Hallissy, 2012-02-10; 42394 reads

Various files from the Unicode Character Database (6.1) compiled into an Excel workbook.

SIL Corporate PUA Assignments Peter Constable and Lorna A. Priest, 2012-02-07; 16757 reads

Reference information on Unicode private-use character assignments used within SIL International. Revised for Unicode 6.1.

The Mondulkiri Font Family 2011-10-05; 4350 reads

The Mondulkiri fonts provide Unicode support for the Khmer script. These fonts are provided free of charge. Previous versions of the fonts have been available since 2003 but are now available for the first time on the SIL website. There are four main fonts available.

Charis SIL NRSI staff, 2011-09-13; 435828 reads

13 Sept and 25 Aug 2011 — Two recent updates! These two updates include fixing line-spacing/clipping issues and encoding official Unicode codepoints for all PUA characters which were added to Unicode 5.2 and 6.0. No new characters were added.

Charis SIL is a Unicode-encoded serif font. Besides having a comprehensive inventory of glyphs needed for almost any Roman- or Cyrillic-based writing system, it also contains the entire inventory of the International Phonetic Alphabet. It has built-in “smart-font” capabilities, so diacritics are properly placed.

Charis is similar to Bitstream Charter, one of the first fonts designed specifically for laser printers. It is highly readable and holds up well in less-than-ideal reproduction environments. It also has a full set of styles - regular, italic, bold, bold italic - and so is more useful in general publishing than Doulos SIL. Charis is a serif, proportionally-spaced font optimized for readability in long printed documents.

Doulos SIL NRSI staff, 2011-09-13; 766455 reads

Doulos SIL is a Unicode-encoded serif font similar to Times New Roman. Besides having a comprehensive inventory of glyphs needed for almost any Roman- or Cyrillic-based writing system, it also contains the entire inventory of the International Phonetic Alphabet. It has built-in “smart-font” capabilities, so diacritics are properly placed.

Doulos is very similar to Times/Times New Roman, but only has a single face - regular. It is intended for use alongside other Times-like fonts where a range of styles (italic, bold) are not needed.

Gentium — a typeface for the nations Victor Gaultney, 2011-09-13; 1361606 reads

Home page for the Gentium, Gentium Basic and Gentium Plus fonts.

Gentium is a typeface family designed to enable the diverse ethnic groups around the world who use the Latin script 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.

Andika Annie Olsen, 2011-09-12; 151104 reads

2011-09-12 — New Release! There were some major line-spacing/clipping issues and we hope these are resolved in this version.

Andika is a sans serif, Unicode-compliant font designed especially for literacy use, taking into account the needs of beginning readers. The focus is on clear, easy-to-perceive letterforms that will not be readily confused with one another.

Annapurna SIL Fonts Jon Coblentz, 2011-08-02; 2897 reads

Annapurna SIL is a Unicode-based font family with support for the many diverse languages that use Devanagari script to produce readable, high-quality publications. The design is intended to be highly readable, reasonably compact, and visually attractive. These fonts are named after the majestic Annapurna mountain range of Nepal.

Using SIL Fonts on Web Pages Victor Gaultney, 2010-09-10; 4609 reads

2011-07-28 Andika and Gentium Basic are now available for use on web pages via the Google Web Fonts service, with more to follow in the future.

SIL fonts can be successfully used on web pages. There are many strategies available, and some tricks to making them work well.

Abyssinica SIL Lorna A. Priest, 2010-12-15; 79871 reads

Home page for the Abyssinica SIL font. Abyssinica SIL supports all Ethiopic characters which are in Unicode including the Unicode 6.0 extensions. As far as we are aware, all languages of Ethiopia are now fully represented in Unicode.

Basic Set of characters needed in a Non-Roman font NRSI team, 2010-12-09; 2556 reads

Some people have asked what a basic character set for a Non-Roman font should include (besides the Non-Roman characters). The chart on this page is our recommendation for a basic set of characters. It includes the union of Windows CP1252 and Mac-Roman.

SIL TypeTuner Web Bob Hallissy, 2010-11-30; 6518 reads

TypeTuner Web (or TTW) is a web delivery system for customized versions of SIL fonts. Now including: Andika, Charis SIL, Doulos SIL, Gentium Plus, Lateef and Scheherazade.

Unicode Character Properties Excel Workbook Peter Constable and Bob Hallissy, 2012-02-10; 42394 reads

Various files from the Unicode Character Database (6.1) compiled into an Excel workbook.

SILConverters 3.1.1 Bob Eaton, Mark Penny, 2010-07-30; 75156 reads

This package provides tools through which you can change the encoding, font, and/or script of text in Microsoft Word and other Office documents, XML documents, and SFM text and lexicon documents. It also installs a system-wide repository to manage your encoding converters and transliterators (TECkit, CC, ICU, Perl, or Python-based, as well as support for adding custom transduction engines).

Graphite in OpenOffice.org Tim Eves, 2010-04-08; 43106 reads

OpenOffice 3.2 uses SIL Graphite software! This project integrates the Graphite smart font rendering engine for complex non-roman scripts and writing systems into OpenOffice.org, the well-known cross-platform FLOSS office suite.

Tai Heritage Pro Jim Brase, 2009-09-22; 15367 reads

The Tai Heritage typeface is designed to reflect the traditional hand-written style of the Tai Viet script. Under the name Tai Heritage Pro, it is now available as a Unicode-encoded font (based on the Unicode 5.2 Standard) with Graphite rendering.

Galatia SIL NRSI team, 2009-07-13; 179886 reads

For displaying and printing Biblical Greek texts in the Unicode encoding. This font is now released under SIL's Open Font License.

Nuosu SIL NRSI staff, 2009-07-09; 52161 reads

The Nuosu SIL Font is a single Unicode font for the standardized Yi script used by a large ethnic group in southwestern China. The font includes a complete set of Yi syllables and radicals (as defined in The Unicode Standard), a basic set of Roman glyphs and various punctuation.

Apparatus SIL NRSI team, 2009-06-12; 52096 reads

The Apparatus SIL fonts are the Unicode version of their predecessor, SIL Apparatus. The design is the same, only the encoding is different. The Apparatus SIL fonts were designed to provide most of the symbols needed to reproduce the textual apparatus found in major editions of Greek & Hebrew biblical texts. This font is now released under SIL's Open Font License.

Padauk Font Martin Hosken, 2011-02-10; 101531 reads

Padauk is a smart font capable of rendering Burmese and the Myanmar script.

Resources that include support for Unicode 5.1

Fonts:

Charis SIL and Doulos SIL
- The 17 of our PUA characters that were added to Unicode 5.1 are accessible by both the PUA and Unicode codepoints. See footnote1

Andika Basic and Gentium Basic
- Four (4) of our PUA characters that were added to Unicode 5.1 are accessible by both the PUA and Unicode codepoints. See footnote2
Unicode BMP Fallback Font

Keyboards:

Windows IPA Keyman and MSKLC keyboard
- upstep, downstep, hook v (bilabial flap) and hook w all use their Unicode 5.1 codepoints now.

Unicode 5.1 Latin and Cyrillic characters – sorted

Unicode Character Properties Excel Workbook

TECkit including Encore2Unicode

SIL Corporate PUA Assignments

Mapping files:

IPA93 to Unicode 5.1 and IPA1990 to Unicode 5.1
- Unicode 5.1 now supports all characters that were in IPA93 and IPA-1990
SIL PUA to Unicode 5.1 Mapping

Articles of general interest

The NRSI Model for Implementing Writing Systems Melinda Lyons, Victor Gaultney, 2001-07-04; 17274 reads

Over its short history, the Non-Roman Script Initiative of SIL International has developed a model for using computers to implement the various writing systems that are needed for text input, storage, processing, and output.

The Digital Divide Alan Conner, 2001-01-01; 13603 reads

SIL chartered the Non-Roman Script Initiative (NRSI) to enable ethnic minorities to bridge the digital divide. NRSI participates in the work of the Unicode Consortium, an international nonprofit founded to establish a universal standard for representing each character of all the world's writing systems on the computer.

An introduction to keyboard design theory: What goes where? Martin Hosken, 2003-02-17; 62383 reads

Designing a keyboard is relatively easy: you just allocate codepoints to keystrokes. The difficulty comes when trying to decide what codepoints to assign to what keystrokes. Do you design based around the characters on the keytops of a user's keyboard or the relative position of the keys? What do you do if you want to be able to type more characters than there are keys in your keyboard?

Glossary Melinda Lyons, et al., 2001-09-01; 24670 reads

A glossary of terms associated with implementing writing systems compiled by the NRSI.

U+F19C U+A71B MODIFIER LETTER RAISED UP ARROW
U+F19D U+A71C MODIFIER LETTER RAISED DOWN ARROW
U+F19E U+A71D MODIFIER LETTER AFRICANIST DOWNSTEP
U+F19F U+A71E MODIFIER LETTER AFRICANIST UPSTEP
U+F208 U+2C6D LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SMALL ALPHA
U+F21A U+2C73 LATIN SMALL LETTER W WITH HOOK
U+F21B U+2C72 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER W WITH HOOK
U+F245 U+A72B LATIN SMALL LETTER TRESILLO
U+F246 U+A72D LATIN SMALL LETTER CUATRILLO
U+F25A U+A727 LATIN SMALL LETTER HENG
U+F25B U+2C6E LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M WITH HOOK
U+F25F U+2C71 LATIN SMALL LETTER V WITH RIGHT HOOK
U+F1E7 U+A788 MODIFIER LETTER LOW CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT
U+F1E9 U+A789 MODIFIER LETTER COLON
U+F1EA U+A78A MODIFIER LETTER SHORT EQUALS SIGN
U+F26A U+A78B LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SALTILLO
U+F21D U+A78C LATIN SMALL LETTER SALTILLO

U+F1E9 U+A789 MODIFIER LETTER COLON
U+F1EA U+A78A MODIFIER LETTER SHORT EQUALS SIGN
U+F26A U+A78B LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SALTILLO
U+F21D U+A78C LATIN SMALL LETTER SALTILLO

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