Tyndale Tech Latest -- Unicode

The latest Tyndale Tech email arrived today from David Instone Brewer (not yet on the web) and it returns to the theme of Biblical language fonts and unicode. David has now dispensed with some of his previous qualms about the adoption of unicode, especially for those working with Macs (see April 2004: Greek and Hebrew Fonts: Unicode and Older and my blog comment Unicode: Tyndale Tech and some thoughts on Greek) and he has developed several of his own new utilities, including the following, in the tradition of his previous Tyndale Font Kits:

Tyndale Unicode Font Kit for PCs
http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Download/TyndaleUnicodePC.exe
Save this installer on your desktop, double-click on it to install the files, and follow the simple instructions to activate it. Then you can delete it.

Tyndale Unicode Font Kit for Macs
http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Download/TyndaleUnicodeMac.zip
Download this, open the folder, and open the "Instructions" file

I have not had chance to try these out for myself yet, but clearly it is likely to be another excellent and helpful tool.

One minor comment: David suggests that "Unicode fonts are loved by publishers". That has not been my own experience yet, though I think it is beginning to change. One of the biggest Theology and Religion / Biblical Studies publishers, T and T Clark International / Continuum, still go with SPIonic, something I'd like to see them change. I have found that other publishers are amenable to shifting to unicode when the aesthetics of font choice are pointed out, e.g. Palatino Linotype's Greek looks a whole league division more attractive than SPIonic.

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For more web helps on working with unicode, and especially Greek, see The Greek New Testament Gateway: Fonts.