Charis SIL
Charis SIL or Charis (Template:IPAc-en) is a slab serif typeface developed by SIL International based on Bitstream Charter, one of the first fonts designed for laser printers. The font offers four family members: roman, bold, italic, and bold italic.
Its design goal is to "provide a single Unicode-based font family that would contain a comprehensive inventory of glyphs needed for almost any Roman- or Cyrillic-based writing system, whether used for phonetic or orthographic needs."[1]
Charis SIL supports Graphite, OpenType, and AAT technologies for advanced rendering features. Along with Doulos SIL and Gentium, it is licensed under the SIL Open Font License (OFL),[2] and can be downloaded free of charge.[3]
Version 6.2 of the font, with over 3,800 glyphs,[4] was released on 1 February 2023.[5] Version 7 was released on 2 June 2025.[6]
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Variant forms of many characters can be chosen in the word-processor. For example, for primer-style 'a' and 'g', append ss01=1 to the name of the font in the font-selection window.[7] (Features are appended with a colon and linked with an ampersand – see images at left.) Alternatively, customized versions of the fonts can be created with TypeTuner, prior to download, that have those forms preset.[8]
Features that may be chosen include small capitals, primer-style 'a' and 'g', roman-style 'a' and 'g' in italic typeface, variant forms of capital 'Ŋ', large modifier letter apostrophe and Saltillo, Vietnamese-style diacritics, Serbian-style italics (in Cyrillic), staveless tone letters, and automatic fractions.[7]
Phonetician John C. Wells has recommended Charis SIL as an excellent font for displaying IPA symbols.[9]
Since version 7, it is now simply called Charis.
Sources
References
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Download page on sil.org
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ a b Charis: features
- ↑ TypeTuner Web homepage
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
External links
- Charis homepage
- Smart Unicode typefaces released under free license, Linux.com article on Charis SIL and its release as open source.
- Using IPA fonts with Mac OS X: The Comprehensive Guide, a guide to setting up and using Charis SIL and the International Phonetic Alphabet characters on Mac OS X
- TypeTuner Web homepage