schticks-fonts-ofl

The Schticks Text font family is an OFL-licensed fork of the STIX Two Text fonts, with a wider weight range and a width range.

View the Project on GitHub twardoch/schticks-fonts-ofl

Schticks Text Font Family

Schticks Text is an OFL-licensed font family, developed as an extensive fork of the renowned STIX Two Text fonts. Designed for versatility, it caters to typographers, publishers, and designers seeking a classic yet comprehensive text typeface suitable for a wide array of applications, including scientific, medical, and technical publications, as well as general-purpose text setting.

The family significantly expands upon STIX Two Text by offering a broad spectrum of weights and widths, providing enhanced typographic flexibility. While rooted in a design optimized for scholarly content, Schticks Text’s expanded range makes it a robust choice for diverse design challenges.

Note: All fonts in the Schticks Text family are currently experimental, unfinished, and not recommended for production use. They are subject to change, and known issues include misaligned diacritics and some inconsistent spacing.

Schticks Text Ultra Condensed Thin Schticks Text Normal Regular Schticks Text Ultra Wide Black

Samples (left to right): Schticks Text Ultra Condensed Thin, Normal Regular, Ultra Wide Black

Key Features

Comparison with STIX Two Text

Schticks Text originates from STIX Two Text (Version 2.0.0), a project by Tiro Typeworks that modernized the Times Roman model for digital typography. STIX Two Text includes Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic styles, along with a dedicated Math font. You can find the original STIX Two Text files (v2.0.0) in the STIXv2/ directory of this repository for reference.

The primary enhancement Schticks Text brings is the vast expansion in weights and widths, transforming the core STIX Two Text design into a more versatile superfamily.

Downloads & Installation

To install the fonts, download either the OTF or TTF package, unzip it, and install the font files using your operating system’s standard font management tools.

Using Schticks Text

For most users, Schticks Text fonts can be selected and used in any application that allows font choice, such as word processors, design software, or web pages (using appropriate web font formats if self-hosting).

For developers wishing to build or modify the fonts, please see the “Technical Details” section below.

Specimens & Visuals

Font Details

Available Styles

Schticks Text provides an extensive array of styles, currently comprising 163 individual fonts across its OpenType (OTF) and TrueType (TTF) families. The styles span multiple axes, systematically named:

This systematic naming (e.g., SchticksText-1UlCd100Th.otf for Ultra Condensed Thin) results in the full family of 9 widths x 9 weights x 2 slopes = 162 styles (plus potentially a base style if not counted in these, though 163 suggests one extra variant or a slight deviation in total count).

Glyph Coverage

Inheriting from STIX Two Text, Schticks Text boasts comprehensive Unicode character support, particularly for:

It includes features such as true small capitals (for Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic), various numeral styles (lining, oldstyle, proportional, tabular), fractions, and sub/superscripts. For a detailed look at the glyph inventory, please consult the Schticks Text Glyph Set PDF.

OpenType Features

Schticks Text supports a rich set of OpenType typographic features, largely inherited from STIX Two Text. These include (feature tags in code):

This list is based on STIX Two Text features; specific implementation in Schticks Text should be verified by testing in OpenType-aware applications.

Technical Details (For Font Developers)

Font Generation Process

Schticks Text began as a fork of the STIX Two Text OpenType fonts (Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic). Adam Twardoch then modified and significantly expanded these base designs, primarily by creating multiple-master sources to interpolate the extensive range of weights and widths that characterize the Schticks Text family.

The font sources are primarily in the .glyphs file format (used by the Glyphs font editor). The most current master source files for generating variable fonts and static instances appear to be:

A shell script, Schticks/Sources/25-gly-mm-width1/make-varfonts.sh, demonstrates the use of fontmake (a command-line tool for building fonts from UFOs or Glyphs sources) to compile variable TrueType fonts:

# Example from make-varfonts.sh:
fontmake -g SchticksText-MM.glyphs --verbose 'DEBUG' --keep-overlaps --no-production-names -o variable
fontmake -g SchticksText-MMI.glyphs --verbose 'DEBUG' --keep-overlaps --no-production-names -o variable

The static OTF and TTF instances provided in the download packages are likely generated from these master sources, either via the variable font workflow or through direct export capabilities of font design software.

Source File Structure

Contributing

As an open-source project, contributions to Schticks Text are welcome! Given the experimental nature of the fonts, assistance in refining them is particularly appreciated.

Reporting Issues

Please report any bugs, rendering issues, or suggestions through the GitHub Issues tracker. Be sure to include details about the font version, operating system, application used, and steps to reproduce the issue.

Making Contributions

  1. Fork the repository.
  2. Make your changes in a new branch. Adhere to the existing design style and ensure consistency.
  3. If modifying font sources, familiarize yourself with the GlyphsApp format and the fontmake build process.
  4. Submit a pull request with a clear description of your changes.

License

Credits

Development Notes & Known Issues

The following notes reflect the development status and known challenges, some ofwhich date back to January 2017:

Original STIX Project Description (Historical Context)

Arie de Ruiter, who in 1995 was Head of Information Technology Development at Elsevier Science, made a proposal to the STI Pub group, an informal group of publishers consisting of representatives from the American Chemical Society (ACS), American Institute of Physics (AIP), American Mathematical Society (AMS), American Physical Society (APS), Elsevier, and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). De Ruiter encouraged the members to consider development of a series of Web fonts, which he proposed should be called the Scientific and Technical Information eXchange, or STIX, Fonts. All STI Pub member organizations enthusiastically endorsed this proposal, and the STI Pub group agreed to embark on what has become a twelve-year project. The goal of the project was to identify all alphabetic, symbolic, and other special characters used in any facet of scientific publishing and to create a set of Unicode-based fonts that would be distributed free to every scientist, student, and other interested party worldwide. The fonts would be consistent with the emerging Unicode standard, and would permit universal representation of every character. With the release of the STIX fonts, de Ruiter’s vision has been realized.

STIX Fonts™ is a trademark of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.

This README aims to provide comprehensive information for both users and potential contributors to the Schticks Text font family.