Computer advancements have made Greek typography a very complex issue. Since Greek has different characters than English, people produced different fonts that used different key strokes for the Greek alphabet. These fonts (now called non-Unicode or legacy fonts) competed with each other since the Greek written with was not easily transferable to any other font style. Further people just grew accustomed to a particular keyboard layout for typing in Greek. Both of these reasons pushed Greek users to pick one font and stick with it.
The emergence of the Internet revealed the core problem with this legacy system. Not everyone used the same font so web pages would not display legible Greek text for everyone.
In an effort to standardize all languages for a world computing audience Unicode has been developed. Unfortunately, most Unicode fonts did not include Greek characters with accents. Now new Unicode fonts are finally emerging to assist those who wish to compute in ancient or biblical Greek. Below are various topics and links which address various aspects of this Greek font saga.
1. Polytonic Unicode Greek Fonts
All of these links have free Greek fonts which include accented characters for ancient or biblical Greek. Please contact the site manager if any links are broken or the font is no longer offered. They are listed in order of aesthetics and universality.
Free Font Download Sites
Free Unicode Fonts – This page has numerous free Unicode fonts with examples of each so you can see if you like the font before you download it. It is a fantastic page!
Adobe Minion Web isn't distributed from the Windows 98 update site or the Internet Explorer 5 product update site, and was never included on our core fonts for the Web download page. However if you're not able to download it from the Internet Explorer 4.0 add-ons page, you can also get it directly from Adobe as part of their WebType package. Preview Minion Pro font from EagleFonts.com. Download free TrueType M. Available in TrueType (.TTF) format for Windows & Mac. Preview Minion Pro.ttf font by typing your own text. Biggest searchable database of free TrueType fonts. On the Mac you use the Font Book to add the font and then copy it to the Windows Office Compatible folder. Many third parties outside of Microsoft package their fonts in.zip files to reduce file size and to make downloading faster. If you have downloaded a font that is saved in.zip format double-click the zip file to open it. This post describes how to install Minion Pro fonts. It was originally written for Ubuntu 7.04/7.10 but seems to work on systems as new as Debian Wheezy, ElementaryOS, and Linux Mint 15. It should work for any modern Linux distribution with TexLive.
Links for Unicode Fonts – This page has numerous free Unicode fonts with examples of each so you can see if you like the font before you download it. It is very helpful.
Gentium – This font has both PC and MAC versions available.
Minion Pro – This font is a wonderful professional font that used to cost $100 but is now available free with Acrobat Reader version 7. To get the font, install Acrobat Reader version 7 then look in the resource folder where acrobat reader was installed. I will probably be at this address on your computer: C:Program FilesAdobeAcrobat 7.0ResourceFont. You will see the Minon files. You still must install the fonts so your system will recognize them. For windows users, open control panel, switch to classic view, scroll down to fonts, and then copy the minion fonts into your fonts folder.
Galilee Unicode Gk – Rodney Decker created this font. It is very similar to MS Arial Unicode. All of the letters, accents and breathings are very legible.
Code 2000 – It doesn’t look quite as refined as Gentium but it is polytonic Unicode nevertheless.
Athena – I believe this is the Unicode version of this font.
About Greek Unicode Fonts
Unicode Polytonic Greek – A great explanation of how Unicode woks and way it is necessary.
Recent Unicode History – A brief overview of the development of Unicode and its Greek applications.
Extended Character Helps – A number of helpful links for many areas regarding Greek extended characters.
Extended Character List – Allen Wood has a very nice list of the codes for the extended characters and a list of Unicode fronts for PCs, MACs, and Unix systems.
Unicode Consortium – This site explains the rudiments of Unicode.
MAC Browser Instructions – This page gives instructions for setting browsers on MACs to view polytonic Unicode fonts.
HRI Project – Read, Write, Print and Email in Greek Unicode – This page has a list of several links that provide installation and usage instructions on reading, writing and printing in Greek, as well as some tips on how to email in Greek, and spell check your Greek text. (Windows, Unix, MAC)
Introduction
This post describes how to install Minion Pro fonts. It was originally written for Ubuntu 7.04/7.10 but seems to work on systems as new as Debian Wheezy, ElementaryOS, and Linux Mint 15. It should work for any modern Linux distribution with TexLive. Some readers have been able to adapt these instructions for OSX (see the comments at the end of this post and also http://jklukas.blogspot.com/2010/02/installing-minionpro-tex-package.html). Also, someone has translated this post into Japanese. Cool 🙂 And here is a shell script: https://github.com/jonkeane/MinionProforLaTeX.
We will install to /usr/local/share/texmf. Check that this matches the definition of TEXMFLOCAL in your installation:
It is vital that you install to the right path in /usr/local.
Install mnsymbol
Click on mnsymbol and download the entire directory as mnsymbol.zip.
Regenerate the indexes and enable MnSymbol:
You should be able to compile mnsymbol-test.tex with no errors.
Install the MinionPro package
We will need a few files from here: http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/minionpro/.
Download scripts.zip and unpack it:
Copy your OTF fonts into the local directory.
Hint: Adobe Reader ships with some Minion Pro fonts.
Make sure you have the latest version of lcdf-typetools and then convert the fonts:
Install the fonts:
Determine which version of the Adobe fonts you have. For example, I have the “002.000” family:
You need to download one of the following encoding files:
The last few steps:
Edit /etc/texmf/updmap.d/10local.cfg and add the following line:
Regenerate all indexes:
You should see a line like this:
You should now be able to compile minionpro-test.tex with no errors.
You might see this error on large documents:
On texlive-2009 systems, you may be able to edit /etc/texmf/texmf.d/95NonPath.cnf and change
to
or some other large value. Then run
I’m not sure about newer versions of TexLive, e.g. http://tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/2012-November/032677.html.
Archived Comments
Date: 2008-11-23 05:59:10 UTC
Author: Marcello
I wanted to install minionpro fonts in order to use them
in my thesis document.
Your instructions are great and simplify alot a quite complicated procedure. Thank you very much Carlo!!!
Date: 2009-02-06 00:34:09 UTC
Author: Marc
Hi from Paris/France,
Thanks a lot for this tutorial. I strictly followed your instructions and everything went fine.
My system : Debian Lenny on 386 and a classic latex installation via aptitude.
On debian, Adobe fonts are in /usr/lib/Adobe, so it’s on this directory I had to “find”.
Real great job ! Thx !
Marc
Date: 2009-04-06 10:17:06 UTC
Author: Alex
Dear Carlo,
it works like a charm! Thanks a lot!
Mail me your address, i’ll send you some selfmade wine.
Thank you so much!
Alex
Date: 2009-05-12 09:01:18 UTC
Author: Noel Dela Cruz
thanks
Date: 2009-05-12 09:02:01 UTC
Author: Noel Dela Cruz
This is great hope to used it regularly
Date: 2009-06-11 06:02:02 UTC
Author: svat
Minion Pro Bold Font Free Download Mac
Thanks a lot for this detailed tutorial! Although I’m using Mac OS X with TexLive (MacTeX) 2008, it worked perfectly for me, with only minor modifications:
- I used ~Library/texmf instead of /usr/local/share/texmf everywhere
- Some of the commands required sudo
- There was no update-updmap, nor was there a /etc/texmf/updmap.d/, but running “sudo updmap-sys –enable Map=MinionPro.map” did the trick.
I’m amazed by how well it all worked; thanks again for the perfectly clear instructions!
Date: 2009-07-27 09:32:56 UTC
Author: John
Thanks! Very clear!
Some people might also need to unzip the opticals file (I think).
Oh, for the mac it’s “- – enable” (there two dashes there).
Date: 2009-09-15 13:03:58 UTC
Author: lydia
I am more or less a Latex noob and am not that familiar to working with the terminal. I use mac os x. I managed to do the copying but when I try to do the mtexlsr (what’s that for anyways?) it echoes command not found, the same with udpmap-sys.
thx for your help!
Date: 2009-12-22 11:39:17 UTC
Author: Jamie Bullock
I also used these fonts for my PhD thesis, and this tutorial was a lifesaver! Many many thanks!
Date: 2011-12-04 22:06:31 UTC
Author: Thomas
I still don’T know how to use it in my latex document.
I ran latex on a file called ‘MinionPro.dtx’. Or was it ‘MinionPro.ins’? Anyway, it was contained in the MinionPro Source.Zip Package from CTAN. Namely, in they subdirectory called “tex”.
Date: 2013-03-14 02:01:50 UTC
Author: Dane
Thanks for this write-up. When you link to mnsymbol, you should leave off the trailing slash, otherwise the link to download it as a zip archive isn’t available (CTAN’s server is a little finicky)
Date: 2013-03-14 07:24:08 UTC
Author: carlo
Dane: fixed, thanks. It looks like CTAN changed their web design recently. Never noticed the trailing-slash issue before.
Minion Fonts Free
Date: 2013-10-29 12:49:32.326749 UTC
Author: John
Also Carlo, if you are updating anyway i found a small change. updmap has been updated and running update-updmap returns that it is an outdated process and should use updmap-sys instead. It does include it still but says to expect inconsistencies.
Thanks for the great tutorial, really, really, really thankful.
Date: 2013-11-28 10:34:08.960239 UTC
Author: Sascha
Thanks for the guide! You saved my live.
Just a small update:
I use Ubuntu 13.10 and /etc/texmf/updmap.d/10local.cfg does not exist anymore. I created it but update-updmap throws the following warning:
Old configuration style found in /etc/texmf/updmap.d
For now these files have been included, but expect inconsistencies.
In the end it worked for me but maybe one should edit the file /var/lib/texmf/updmap.cfg-DEBIAN instead (on Ubuntu 13.10).
Also, I never saw this line: updmap-sys: using map file /usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/map/dvips/MnSymbol/MnSymbol.map
Date: 2015-03-28 05:49:23.528116 UTC
Author: exl
Everything works to the point of
Then when I try the last command, I get this error:
So close, but not working. Any guidance would be much appreciated!