【Abhaya Libre】为僧伽罗语、泰米尔语和拉丁语设计的字体

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Abhaya Libre是一种用于僧伽罗语、泰米尔语和拉丁语交流的字体。Abhaya Libre项目旨在生产最先进、最完整的僧伽罗字体，涵盖僧伽罗语、巴利语和梵语文本中的复杂表示。

本着自由字体运动的真正精神，Abhaya Libre项目将现有项目和一群设计师聚集在一起，开发出一种连贯的字体。该项目一开始的目的是解放（开源）FM Abhaya，这是Pushpanada Ekanayake最流行的僧伽罗传统格式文本字体。泰米尔语字形集基于Modular Infotech的字体，拉丁语是为匹配Sol Matas的僧伽罗语字形集而设计的。

最初的FM Abhaya的图纸是基于政府印刷部在20世纪70年代至90年代使用的通用字体。这种风格的根源与19世纪末库雷类型铸造厂的N J库雷引入僧伽罗文字的调制结构和美学有关。FM Abhaya字体在ASCII编码中设置了有限的字形，该字体被重新绘制并扩展为具有五个字形和更多字形的家族。在严格的研究和社区贡献的推动下，Abhaya Libre包括一套广泛的连字、交替词、文体交替词、历史连字和Opentype功能，以支持僧伽罗语、巴利语和梵语语言的正确表达。

拉丁文字与“Abhaya Libre Sinhala”的美学相匹配，其灵感来源于原始僧伽罗语的风格，从粗到细的独特笔画之间形成了鲜明的对比，并经过进一步修改，与拉丁字体的视觉逻辑共存。根据Didone字体的线条，导管参考为某些终端添加了一点僧伽罗语形式。为了优化屏幕观看效果，增加了大型计数器以及小型升降器。

“Abhaya”这个名字来源于古代乌帕蒂萨·努瓦拉王国统治斯里兰卡的国王Abhaya（前474年至前454年）。

这项技术的最初开发是由谷歌字体资助的。该项目由Mooniak领导，Mooniak是一个位于斯里兰卡科伦坡的设计师合作团体，FM Abhaya字体的设计师Pushpananda Ekanayake和拉丁设计师Sol Matas合作。

Abhaya Libre is a text typeface designed for communications in Sinhala, Tamil and Latin scripts. Abhaya Libre project aims to produce the most advanced and complete Sinhala font with coverage for complex representations in Sinhala, Pali and Sanskrit texts.

In the true spirit of Libre Fonts movement Abhaya Libre project brought together existing projects and a group of designers to develop a coherent typeface. The project started off with the aim of liberating (open sourcing) FM Abhaya, the most popular Sinhala legacy-format-text-font by Pushpanada Ekanayake. Tamil glyph-set is based on typefaces by Modular Infotech and Latin was designed to match Sinhala glyph-set by Sol Matas.

The drawings for the original FM Abhaya was based on the common text typeface used by the Department of Government Printing in the 1970s—1990s. The roots of this style relates to the modulation structure and aesthetics introduced to Sinhala script by the N J Cooray of the Cooray Type Foundry in the late 1800s. FM Abhaya font which had a limited glyphs set in ASCII encoding was redrawn and expanded into a family with five wieghts and more glyphs. Driven by rigorous research and community contributions, Abhaya Libre includes an extensive set of ligatures, alternates, stylistic alternates, historical ligatures and Opentype features to support proper representation of text in Sinhala, Pali and Sanskrit langauges.

The Latin characters, that match the aesthetics of ‘Abhaya Libre Sinhala’, which was inspired by the style of the original Sinhala with an eminent contrast between distinctive strokes that go from thick to thin and was further modified to co-exist with the visual logics of Latin typefaces. The ductus references according to the lines of a Didone typeface add a touch of Sinhala form to certain terminations. Large counters have been added along with small ascenders and descenders for optimized screen viewing.

The name ‘Abhaya’ comes after the King Abhaya (474 BCE to 454 BCE) who reigned Sri Lanka from the ancient kingdom of Upatissa Nuwara.

The initial development of this was funded by Google Fonts. Project is led by Mooniak, a collaborative collective of designers based in Colombo Sri Lanka with the cooperation of Pushpananda Ekanayake, the designer of the FM Abhaya font and Sol Matas as the Latin designer.