STIX Fonts project

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STIX
Category Various
Classification Transitional
Commissioned by STIX Pub
Foundry MicroPress and others
Date created 2008
Date released 2010
ESSTIX
Category Various
Classification Transitional
Commissioned by Elsevier
Foundry Elsevier
Date created 2000

The STIX Fonts project is a project sponsored by several leading scientific and technical publishers to provide, under royalty-free license, a comprehensive font set of mathematical symbols and alphabets, intended to serve the scientific and engineering community for electronic and print publication. The STIX fonts are available as fully hinted OpenType/CFF fonts.[1] There are currently no plans by the STIX Pub to provide a TrueType version, with the note that software such as Java should instead add OpenType support.[2] However there exists an unofficial conversion of STIX Fonts (from the beta version release) to TrueType, suitable for use with software without OpenType support.[3]

STIX fonts also include[4] natural language glyphs for Latin, Greek and Cyrillic.

Development process

Among the glyphs in STIX, 32.9% have been contributed by the project members. The commercial TeX vendor and TeX font foundry MicroPress has been contracted to create the additional glyphs. The STIX project will also create a TeX implementation. Goals also include incorporating the characters into Unicode, and ensuring that browsers can use them.

Members of the STIX (Scientific and Technical Information Exchange) Fonts project, known collectively as the STI Pub consortium, include the American Institute of Physics, the American Chemical Society, the American Mathematical Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Physical Society, and Elsevier.

The Font contents were assembled from a list of every character/glyph required for publication in the journals of the participating STI Pub companies. Every scientific discipline is represented in this list, as well as many other fields from the arts and humanities. Most of the glyphs in the STIX Fonts have been designed in Times-compatible style. In addition to Times-compatible glyphs, some portions of the STIX Fonts include other design styles such as sans serif, monospace, Fraktur, Script, and calligraphic.
—STIX Fonts website

A beta version of the fonts was released on October 31, 2007. This version does not include enough of the OpenType mathematical layout features present in Cambria Math, so it is not usable to the fullest extent in Microsoft Office 2007.[5] The Latin glyph set included in the beta version does not yet cover all the characters required to typeset in Eastern European languages.

“Final design changes” were declared “complete” at the project website on 9 June 2008. A release by end of May 2009 for the “initial production release” was announced, still without the support for OpenType layout features of Office 2007 or TeX. In September 2009, the fonts went to the final packaging stage. However in October, missing glyphs were discovered, adding a delay. The fonts were scheduled to be released in April 2010, and released on 2010-05-28.

The project has taken considerably longer than forecast. The website has been updated only intermittently, and thus has regularly been out-of-date, with forecast milestones often being overshot. For example, on 20 July 2011 the main page on the official site[6] stated, "Version 1.1, which will include fonts packaged for use with Microsoft Office applications, is scheduled for release by the end of 2010. [...] This site was last updated on 1 November [2010]." Version 1.1.0 was released February 24, 2012. This version facilitates equation editing in recent versions of Microsoft Word.[7] The current forecast for the next version that will include support for LaTeX is "no later than July 2012".[8] Currently STIX fonts may be used in LaTeX via unicode-math package, although the community maintained derivative, XITS, has better support.

The STIX Fonts are included in Mac OS X Lion (10.7).

The javascript framework MathJax uses the STIX fonts for including mathematics in web pages. Installing the fonts on the local computer improves MathJax’s typesetting speed.[9]

The Math Editor equation editor uses STIX fonts as its primary font.

ESSTIX

A precursor to the STIX project is the ESSTIX (Elsevier Science STIX) font, developed and later donated by Elsevier. It is currently available from the World Wide Web Consortium as part of the Amaya web browser ().

See also

References

  1. ↑ Owens, Evan (2010-05-28). "Press Release - STIX Fonts Version 1.0 Released". New York: American Institute of Physics. Retrieved 2010-05-29. 
  2. ↑ Analysis of Feedback Received from Testers: Missing Unicode/Glyph Feedback Received Regarding STIX Fonts
  3. ↑ STIX Fonts - TTF (True Type)
  4. ↑ Barbara Beeton, “STIX fonts and Unicode”, talk at TUG 2007 video
  5. ↑ Murray Sargent, (Nov. 6, 2007) STIX Beta Fonts
  6. ↑ STIX Fonts Project Website, archived on 2011-09-15.
  7. ↑ STIX Fonts Project Website accessed 2012-03-05.
  8. ↑ STIX Fonts Project Website accessed 2012-04-14.
  9. ↑ MathJax Font Help accessed 2012-08-14.

External links

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