Hi Nina

Not an expert on the old Greek stuff but you could try here.

Didn't read terms of use either but there should be something that fits the bill...

Have you looked at Andron by Andreas Stötzner at SIAS? A good preview of it can be seen at MyFonts.

Have you looked at the GFS fonts? Maybe their Didot would work?
http://www.greekfontsociety.gr/pages/en_typefaces19th.html

Yes, that is Polytonic.
Monotonic only has the tonos (looks like acute accent) and the occasional dieresis.

You might want to consider editorial style: traditionally, Greek quotes inset into Latin text were very "italic".

Whether upright or leaning, John Hudson's Greek for Constantia seems a good match.

Thanks everyone for the input so far.
Constantia looks «not bad», formally – is there a Polytonic version? I can't seem to find it.

The GFS fonts (of which I tried the «Didot» and the «Bodoni») look like they'd be quite nice as standalone fonts, but they don't blend in with the existing Latin too well. Andron is probably over the budget in this case, and it might also be a bit too light and a bit too «oldstyle» in the setting I have – if I used that, I'd really prefer to use it within its own Latin.

One thing I'm realizing is that I need the Greek to be rather subordinate to the Latin in this case, so actually not too «traditional» – both in terms of blending in (there is very little Greek, and the Latin should be allowed to set the tone so to speak), and also in terms of not being too italic/cursive-looking when upright.
I need Roman+Italic to be rather distinct (I'm dealing with situations like in the Latin within the top screenshot above, which is from a transcription of a manuscript, where italicization (even inside words) carries extra meaning).

Does the Vllg licence allow for the fonts to be extended in this way by a third party? Just curious...

Is there any reason why Arno Pro would not do the job?

Speaking of Slimbach, what about the new Adobe Text? (If and when you can get it!)

See:
http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2010/04/useful_details.html

Constantia looks «not bad», formally – is there a Polytonic version?

Sorry ... I had assumed it did, as John is an authority on such matters.

@Nick that doesn't mean that Microsoft paid him to do a full polytonic font (which I assume is quite a big hassle).

But speaking of John and polytonic Greek, did you look at SBL Greek?
http://www.sbl-site.org/educational/biblicalfonts.aspx

Paul, the license for Newzald allows modifications after written consent by the foundry (not sure about the third party bit). Commissioning something is rather out of the question though, in terms of budget and time.

I don't have Arno (I skipped CS3, which IIRC it was included with). Looking at it, it might work. Adobe Text looks good! It's not sold separately, is it? I'm still on CS4.
The SBL is again, a little bit too «traditional» perhaps, and I see no Italics.

I've checked out some others – turns out the Greek of Greta is a surprisingly good match stylistically and very close to what I was imagining (of course expensive too; but I already have part of it).
http://www.typotheque.com/fonts/greta_text/regular/text_sample/greek_pol...
Does this look good to people who actually know Greek?

Other suggestions welcome, perhaps there's more in this general direction?

Greta looks fine for the most part, and won't give you any trouble in terms of weight, although the style is a bit more contemporary than Newzald. Among Slimbach fonts, the best match might be Minion Pro (possibly the caption cut, to get the weight and x-height closer to Newzald), although this is less contemporary in style than Newzald. GFS Elpis might be in the right vicinity too.

However, do you need the ancient numerals (like koppa and sampi)? If so, Elpis doesn't have them. Minion Pro has them in lowercase, which is usually - but not always, depending on the kind of texts you're setting - all you need. Greta has both uppercase and lowercase forms, but they're not always well drawn in relation to the rest of the character set.

Thank you. Minion looks interesting while as you say, it feels a bit less contemporary. GFS Elpis looks nice, but seems to have no Italics, which I need.

"Greta looks fine for the most part"
I hope this «most part» includes all of the basic uppercase/lowercase letters as well as accents? I think I'll mostly be dealing with short Greek quotes and single terms, rather than long passages; I also don't think I need the numerals BTW – but I should check back with the editors.

This «most part» includes the basic uppercase/lowercase letters. I'm not sure about the accents - they are rather understated, and angle of the acute and grave accents is very steep (thus poorly differentiated). To my eye, Greta works better for monotonic Greek than for polytonic. However, if the Greek text is only short snippets, it would probably be OK. The sort of people who care about the exact choice of words in ancient texts will know the accentuation from context anyway.

At the GFS site, check Olga. As I remember, the x-height isn't quite as large as your text font, but I'd imagine the color is a better match.

Thank you all! Some interesting options so far. I'll check back with the client to see how much [polytonic] Greek there really is (and whether that would warrant additional expenses). I'll also double-check if Italics can possibly be avoided in the Greek, which would evidently open up more choices (but I doubt it).

Have you thought about using a sans-serif typeface for the Greek text? This might banish some of your worries — but there won’t be a huge set of fonts to choose from, either. Fedra Sans is an option, I think.

As a user of polytonic Greek, I find that when mixing Greek with English (or German) it is better to use a typeface that does *not* match (this is what Oxford and Harvard do, I believe). There's a font called Alfios available whose italic should work well (the font can be freely downloaded at http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/).

"I find that when mixing Greek with English (or German) it is better to use a typeface that does *not* match"

…does not match how – and why?
I mean, would I want to make it stand out/apart more; or would I want something more authentically Greek that then can't match the Latin so closely? …?

The sans idea is interesting R. I doubt it'd necessarily be easier to find a sans that has just the right amount of contrast to the serif, though… I'll give Fedra a try.

John, the Porson style of Alfios italic seems a nice idea, but the x-height is way too small -- the Greek accents will be all over the place in Nina's layout and the Greek caps will obtrude far more than the Latin, which is always an issue mixing Greek with Latin.

I really think that one needs to match vertical proportions, and therefore use a compact Greek.

ANY style of Greek font with comparable capital and x (kappa) height to Newzald should be the starting point.

Hi Nina,

Nick is right on about the desirability of similar vertical proportions, but I also agree with the others who suggest you don't try to "match." I think there's a middle ground between matching and jarring: A complementary non-match is better than an imperfect attempt at matching.

Though I don't have my copy (copies) of Elements of Typographic Style handy, I think Robert Bringhurst suggests something like this when combining Latin and Greek (and Cyrillic) scripts. I seems to me that when you're using a type doesn't have Greek letters, it might be best to look for something different enough not to look like a bad match. It's kind of like the style convention of using italic for occasional foreign words (using Latin script) within an English language text.

I like the idea of a sans like Fedra -- or any Greek face that's got workable proportions but less stroke contrast than Newzald. Let us know how your experiments with it go.

- Matthew

>I find that when mixing Greek with English (or German) it is better to use a typeface that does *not* match . . . >

By that logic, if you set a job in Arno or Garamond Premier, etc., you'd change fonts to set any Greek?

And while I suppose I'm hopelessly out of date, I'd not set any Greek run into the text with a sans when the text is set in a serif. At some point, type has to be about the reader and his/her unsophisticated expectations, not about the oh-so-erudite designer . . .

Most likely, the unsophisticated expectation of the reader is that all the letters in a text, regardless of the alphabet they belong to, should look as if they were part of the same set, i. e. typeface. If this is not possible because the font does not contain all the characters needed, it might be least distracting to use a noticeably different typeface for a well-defined group of letters, namely Greek ones, than to make a moribund attempt at creating the perfect match. To my mind, this is not erudite, it is just good sense.

Have you looked at John Hudson's SBL Greek?

http://www.sbl-site.org/educational/BiblicalFonts_SBLGreek.aspx