The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge

[Alistair]

I have been following this thread and the THGNT with some interest having been at the Bible seminars with Peter and Dirk in London some time ago.

 

My comment here is that I think an opportunity has been missed to revisit the actual typeface used for the Greek text. Poking about the innards of the sample PDF would indicate they have used EzraSIL (I may be wrong). Their website actually says "The font is beautiful". What? No, it isn't.

 

It's purely subjective personal opinion (I have been a professional graphic designer and typesetter and still do the odd job for charity) but visually the text looks very samey in comparison to any other modern Greek Text.

 

It's not that I'm expecting something similar to that used for the Complutensian Polyglott, but… it's not beautiful.

 

Just saying, that's all.

Edited March 21, 2018 by Alistair

[Helen Brown]

Sorry, but all our Greek texts use only our own font, and it would be a major project to convert them to other fonts or to Unicode to give you a choice. The latter will come eventually, and is of course available for export of the text.

[Brian W. Davidson]

Glad the review was helpful! Yes, with the internal web browser I had to get to the images a different way. Double clicking the pics didn’t work. Instead of going to the pages tab of the NT Virtual Manuscript Room, I just scrolled down on the tab I was initially taken to and clicked the link there.

[Alistair]

Sorry, but all our Greek texts use only our own font, and it would be a major project to convert them to other fonts or to Unicode to give you a choice. The latter will come eventually, and is of course available for export of the text.

I haven't purchased the Accordance module of this text so my comment was not about the Accordance font.

 

My comment was about the typeface used in the printed paper version of the THGNT as evidenced by the sample PDF available from their website, and in pictures etc.

[Alistair]

As the THGNT takes inspiration from the work of S. P. Tregelles, it might be of interest to folk to read Tregelle's own account: 

 

An account of the printed text of the Greek New Testament ; with remarks on its revision upon critical principles.

Together with a collation of the critical texts of Griesbach, Scholz, Lachmann, and Tischendorf, with that in common use.

Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, LL.D.

 

https://archive.org/details/a609739200treguoftand there are other copies on the same website. Enjoy!

[ukfraser]

My comment was about the typeface used in the printed paper version...

Unfortunately there are many who consider arial to be beautiful! And the ms word legacy makes everyone an expert in dtp!

 

;o(

[Alistair]

Unfortunately there are many who consider arial to be beautiful! And the ms word legacy makes everyone an expert in dtp!

 

;o(

It will be in Comic Sans next, heralded by groans from one side and cries from the other of "What's wrong with Comic Sans? I like Comic Sans!"

[Alistair]

BTW after further hacking of the PDF I think the font used is AdobeTextPro, see https://typekit.com/fonts/adobe-text.

 

I don't think anyone could accuse designer Robert Slimbach of being a typographic lightweight! 

 

But when I look at the THGNT text, it looks like a monospaced font (which it isn't), and I have issues with the kerning in several places.

 

I prefer the Accordance font, though I understand why users might want to change that to another of their choice.

 

'Nuff said.

[Michel Gilbert]

. . .the sample PDF would indicate they have used EzraSIL (I may be wrong) . . .

 

FWIW, Ezra SIL is a Hebrew font. Did you mean Galatia SIL, the Greek counterpart? The THGNT font looks almost identical to it except in a few places. Many prefer it, others politely say it is a "readable Greek font."

[Graham Buck]

I agree with Alistair that the font in the print edition is Adobe Text Pro. Interestingly enough, the online edition uses Gentium Plus. Not sure about that call, probably made by some developer… (you can't trust those guys).

 

That being said, my personal preference is for Baskerville for any Latin alphabet text (so, so tasty) and our Accordance fonts for others. I'm not a fan of hard angles on combining marks, so that's kind of a deal breaker for me. In addition, though I understand the portability of unicode, I fall back on the ascii fonts all the time because of the granularity I have in properly aligning the marks. I've yet to find a system, outside of LaTeX which in almost any case gets it right without me adjusting things.

 

Anyway, this was a fun project, I'm glad you all appreciate it so much.

[Alistair]

FWIW, Ezra SIL is a Hebrew font. Did you mean Galatia SIL, the Greek counterpart? The THGNT font looks almost identical to it except in a few places. Many prefer it, others politely say it is a "readable Greek font."

Quite right, I was typing faster than I was thinking.

 

Acrobat Pro listed the fonts which including EzraSIL so I thought that must be it, yes? No.

 

Maybe it was just used for Codex Aleph in the apparatus.

 

Anyway, thanks Michel for pointing out my mistake!

[Alistair]

I agree with Alistair that the font in the print edition is Adobe Text Pro. Interestingly enough, the online edition uses Gentium Plus. Not sure about that call, probably made by some developer… (you can't trust those guys).

 

That being said, my personal preference is for Baskerville for any Latin alphabet text (so, so tasty) and our Accordance fonts for others. I'm not a fan of hard angles on combining marks, so that's kind of a deal breaker for me. In addition, though I understand the portability of unicode, I fall back on the ascii fonts all the time because of the granularity I have in properly aligning the marks. I've yet to find a system, outside of LaTeX which in almost any case gets it right without me adjusting things.

 

Anyway, this was a fun project, I'm glad you all appreciate it so much.

In my professional work I prefer to use a typeface that includes a light and a semibold font, not just Roman and Bold. 

IMHO, if people are talking about the fonts, the designer has failed in this regard.

The best typeface is the one you don't notice.

[ukfraser]

The best typeface is the one you don't notice.

We are going off topic but not sure I agree 100%

Church of England has standardised on gill sans and every time I open up my common worship I am delighted, visually by the layout, but also by the smell and feel of the leather and then by saying the words leading the congregation. Like tasting fine wine. Times and seasons nearly as much but unfortunately it’sonly available in cloth bound. But I think you do notice good typography and layout because it jumps out because so much is mediocre to poor these days.

 

But I appreciate what you are saying for most cases and it really jarred when a dtp student of mine deliberately tried to wind me up by handing in a piece of work in a funny courier with off set base using white font on black in a barely readable point size.

[Alistair]

A couple of videos on Bible fonts if anyone is interested:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ipLK60_lq4

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KLLOmOePFQ