Configure Project Fonts

By Miller Prosser, May 2018

For philology projects working with multiple languages or with a language that requires a special font, use the following settings to configure the fonts.

NOTE: this page is intended for project administrators. Contact the OCHRE Data Service for help uploading new fonts for use in OCHRE.

OCHRE can configure an entire Writing System to use a specific font. This is helpful when you need a special font to render something like Hebrew, Coptic, or Syriac. Not all fonts contain the appropriate Unicode font block for these languages. You may prefer to view your project navigation in Times New Roman or some other standard font. However, you will likely find that this font does not contain the Unicode font block for a rare writing system. So you do not have to render your entire project using a customized font, you can configure a Writing System with that customized font.

NOTE: OCHRE Data Service typically configures Writing Systems. We have detailed Writing Systems for Latin, Greek, Hebrew/Aramaic, Coptic, Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Syriac, Ugaritic, and Mesopotamian Cuneiform. Contact us if you need a writing system not in this list. OCHRE can display any writing system that has a Unicode block. A project can borrow any of these writing systems from the OCHRE master project.

Each OCHRE writing system hierarchy is configured with a specialized font that renders the signs correctly. Further, each writing system hierarchy is linked to an OCHRE Concept that allows the program to customize the display of the writing system in other ways, such as right-to-left display.

This image illustrates how to add a font to render Hebrew. This font lives on an OCHRE server, to make it available to all users.

Notice that the font size can be adjusted by writing system.

This font becomes the default font for this writing system.

This font can be customized by project if necessary. To do so, create a Writing System hierarchy in your project, then add the script units from OCHRE.

This image shows the font configuration of a specific project. The Navigation font is Times New Roman. The Document font is our special Hebrew/Aramaic font called Cardo. The Document font is the one that renders view of texts.

But I thought the Hebrew font was configured on the writing system. Why is it here as well?

The Writing System is configured to render all the letters, accents, and punctuation in Hebrew. It cannot configure the various metadata symbols like the half-brackets used to record damage. Cardo has these half-brackets, so we put the Cardo URL in the Document font URL so that the project will use the same font to render metadata and Hebrew letters.

Here is a screenshot from a Dead Sea Scroll fragment 4Q2.

The text is rendered in Cardo font, picked up from the Hebrew/Aramaic writing system.

The half-brackets (line 6) are from Cardo, but from the project-level Document font specification.