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About New Athena Unicode Font

November 11, 2015: sales of GreekKeys 2008 ceased on October 28. The updated product GreekKeys 2015 is now available at the web site of the Society for Classical Studies (free to SCS members, $20 for non-members, free or discounted for those who purchased GreekKeys 2008 on or after August 1, 2014). Click here for the new sales and support site.

New Athena Unicode is a freeware multilingual font distributed by the American Philological Association. It follows the Unicode standard (version 6/7) and includes characters for English and Western European languages, polytonic Greek, Coptic, Old Italic, and Demotic Egyptian transliteration (and Arabic transliteration), as well as metrical symbols and other characters used by classical scholars and some required by medievalists and Byzantinists. New Athena Unicode is a "smart font" that includes OpenType ligatures allowing the display of precomposed combined characters not recognized by Unicode but needed by scholars (for more information see the page on technical details).

LICENSE: The TrueType version of Athenian font and the TrueType version of New Athena Unicode font have long been made available to all as freeware to facilitate communication on the internet. They may be used in digital or print publication without further permission from the Society for Classical Studies (formerly the American Philological Association). The font is now offered under an Open Font License, applying both to its .ttf format and to the .woff format provided for web developers. The current license may be read in a PDF in the download package, or by clicking here. For more details about the Open Font License see http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=OFL. The name "New Athena Unicode" is reserved, and any modified version of the font produced in accordance with the Open Font License must use a different name.

PLEASE NOTE: downloading and installing this font is NOT the only thing you need to do to type Unicode Greek. In addition to a font including polytonic Greek characters (and you already have at least a few system fonts on your PC or Mac that include them, although they may lack some of the specialized characters that scholars need), you need to activate a keyboard that inputs polytonic Greek. For keyboards, the GreekKeys 2008 package is one possibility (and contains features needed by some scholars), but for basic usage you may be able to do what you need to do simply by using what is already included in your OS (Windows XP and later, Mac OS X). For Mac Greek Polytonic input, see the related FAQ. For Windows, see the related FAQ. If you are a classicist making the transition from an old custom encoding of polytonic Greek to Unicode, you may find it useful to read the paper "Before and After Unicode: Working with Polytonic Greek".

Latest Version

August 15, 2021: Version 5.008 of New Athena Unicode font has been released. This version adds four combining characters useful for Coptic. See the Revision History in the download, in AboutNAUfont_v5_008.rtf.

DOWNLOAD New Athena Unicode version 5.008 in ttf format (for Windows or MacOS or Linux). The download contains four font files for the four styles: Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic. For maximum compatibility with modern programs, it is recommended that you install all four, but for some simple applications installing just the Regular style may suffice.

FOR WEB DEVELOPERS: DOWNLOAD New Athena Unicode version 5.008 in woff format.

Previous Versions

DOWNLOAD New Athena Unicode version 5.007 in ttf format (for Windows or MacOS or Linux). The download contains four font files for the four styles: Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic. For maximum compatibility with modern programs, it is recommended that you install all four, but for some simple applications installing just the Regular style may suffice.

FOR WEB DEVELOPERS: DOWNLOAD New Athena Unicode version 5.007 in woff format.

December 1, 2019: Version 5.006 of New Athena Unicode font has been released. This versiona adds six characters approved in Unicode version 12 that are useful to Ugaritic and Egyptological transcription (U+A7BA to A7BF). For a description of the changes see the Revision History in the download, in AboutNAUfont_v5_006.rtf.

DOWNLOAD New Athena Unicode version 5.006 in ttf format (for Windows or MacOS or Linux). The download contains four font files for the four styles: Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic. For maximum compatibility with modern programs, it is recommended that you install all four, but for some simple applications installing just the Regular style may suffice.

June 7, 2018: Version 5.005 of New Athena Unicode font has been released. This fixes an error in line spacing of the Regular version that started to be visible in MS Word in 2018. This error was not present in versions 5.002 or earlier and affects only those who downloaded 5.004 from this site within the past 18 months. If you have 5.004 installed, please download this version to replace it. The version installed from the GreekKeys 2015 package from the SCS does not suffer from this error. For a description of the changes see the Revision History in the download, in AboutNAUfont_v5_005.rtf.

DOWNLOAD New Athena Unicode version 5.005 in ttf format (for Windows or MacOS or Linux). The download contains four font files for the four styles: Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic. For maximum compatibility with modern programs, it is recommended that you install all four, but for some simple applications installing just the Regular style may suffice.

FOR WEB DEVELOPERS: DOWNLOAD New Athena Unicode version 5.005 in woff format (generated from FontLab v. 6).

December 1, 2016: Version 5.004 of New Athena Unicode font has been released. The changes (and a few additions in PUA) involved are very minor and concern a few special characters for palaeographic descriptions in a manuscript catalogue, and thus those who have version 5.002 installed from the GreekKeys 2015 package from the SCS do not really need to upgrade to this version. For a description of the changes see the Revision History in the download, in AboutNAUfont_v5_004.rtf.

July 12, 2015: Version 5.002 of New Athena Unicode font has been released. All four styles have been revised with corrected forms of the two glyphs U+03da (capital stigma) and U+03de (capital modern koppa).

June 11, 2015: Version 5.0a of New Athena Unicode font has been released. This differs from the May 1 version in one detail of the regular font only, which now has version number 5.001 and date June 11, 2015, while the styled fonts are unchanged from the May 1 version. The one detail changed is the height of capital beta (now matching that of other capital Greek letters): this had been adjusted in FontLab Studio some time ago, but because of a bug FLS continued to generate the old height until by a workaround it was persuaded that the glyph has new data.

May 1, 2015: Version 5.00 of New Athena Unicode font (dated Feb. 22, 2015) has been released. The major change in version 5 is that the instructions for composed characters (those that have to be entered as more than one Unicode code point, like beta with dot below or epsilon with macron above) have been moved from a liga table to a ccmp table, which makes the effect of these instructions automatic, rather than subject to the user’s switching on advanced typographic features. Precomposed glyphs for lowercase Greek letters with overstroke (U+0305) have been added. Various other revisions and additions are listed in the About file that is contained in the download package.

DOWNLOAD New Athena Unicode version 5.002 in ttf format (for Windows or Mac OS X or Linux). The download contains four font files for the four styles: Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic. For maximum compatibility with modern programs, it is recommended that you install all four, but for some simple applications installing just the Regular style may suffice.

FOR WEB DEVELOPERS: DOWNLOAD New Athena Unicode version 5.002 in woff format (generated at http://www.font2web.com).

How to locate the characters in New Athena Unicode v. 5

Two files are offered here for download. One is a PDf giving some general advice and listing the glyphs that are special precomposed combinations (such as dotted Greek letters) and do not have code points, and so do not appear in the cmap listing. The other is a text file for the cmap of the font, which lists in sequence all the glyphs that have a Unicode code point.

Download FindCharacterNAU.pdf.

Download the cmap text file.

Previous Versions: correction and revision history

July 12, 2012: Version 4.05 of New Athena Unicode font (newathu405.ttf, dated July 12, 2012) has been released. This is identical to version 4.03 except for version information and the removal of a corruption in the ligature tables that affected some OS X applications (TextEdit, Word).

New Athena Unicode version 4.05 in ttf format (for Windows or Mac OS X or Linux).

Experimental Styled Versions (Italic, Bold, Bold Italic)

Styled versions of New Athena Unicode now available for experimentation and comment. Separate italic, bold, and bold italic versions of New Athena Unicode 4.05 are now available for download here. Some programs (such as MS Word) automatically apply styles to a regular font, but other programs (such as Mellel and TextEdit) will display bold, for instance, only if a separate bold version of the font is present. Version 4.05 fixes a problem with failures of OpenType ligatures in some OS X applications, but is otherwise the same as 4.03. Version 4.03 made no changes over 4.02 in the Regular and Italic styles (except for change of font version number), but extensive corrections were made to fix errors and overlapping of glyph elements in the Bold and Bold Italic versions. WARNING: using these fonts will change the character spacing of styled elements of existing documents, which may also lead to repagination. Do not use these styled versions unless you understand what this warning means. If you do use these fonts, please send feedback to Donald Mastronarde.

woff Format for Web Developers

(Jan. 17, 2014) To assist web developers who want to embed a compressed version in a site, New Athena Unicode version 4.05 is now also available in woff format. The Open Font License has been revised to indicate that it applies equally to the TrueType and the woff versions.

February 4, 2012: Version 4.03 of New Athena Unicode font (newathu403.ttf, dated Feb. 4, 2012) has been released. This is identical to version 4.02 except for version information (4.03 has been generated to go with updates in the styled versions.

July 9, 2011: Version 4.02 of New Athena Unicode font (newathu.ttf, dated July 9, 2011) has been released. This is identical to version 4.01 except for the removal of a typographical error in the OpenType tables.

March 28, 2011: Version 4.01 of New Athena Unicode font (newathu.ttf, dated March 28, 2011) has been released, containing only one additional character (U+2212, minus), but otherwise the same as Version 4.00 of New Athena Unicode font (dated Feb. 13, 2011). This version contains revisions in the Supplemental Punctuation block starting at U+2E00, both additions and corrections (some characters that had been added at the proposed code points prior to final approval have had to have their code points fixed to conform to what was finally approved). In addition, with Version 4 styled fonts (italic, bold, and bold italic) have been created for testing.

May 2, 2010: Version 3.71 of New Athena Unicode font (newathu.ttf, dated May 2, 2010) has been released. This version contains a number of additional roman characters with diacritics to serve the needs of some forms of transliteration of Hebrew and Greek. Also, glyphs for epsilon and omicron with breve and diacritics (except circumflex and circumflex with breathings) have been added in PUA (U+EC73 through U+EC82). Within a few days, these new items will be reflected in the listing on this GreekKeys website (Technical Details). For a text-document showing the list of the codepoints and glyph names in this version of the font, excluding the precomposed glyphs for dotted letters (this is an edited extract of a Unicode cmap table in the font), click here. It can be opened with your browser and searched, or downloaded and searched with a word processor or text editor.

February 22, 2010: Version 3.70 of New Athena Unicode font (newathu.ttf, dated February 22, 2010) has been released. This version was produced in response to a request for various glyphs needed in formal descriptions of medieval manuscripts and with the contribution of glyphs from the font Codicology by Robert Allison. At the same time, design adjustments have been made to a few glyphs: the shapes of left and right single and double quotes have been made uniform (most noticeable in the improvement of U+2019, which serves as apostrophe in Greek); the dotted crosses U+203B and U+205C have been made similar in size and the dots made uniform with the dots in the nearby punctuation code points; U+10176 has been somewhat enlarged for better conformity to its new alternative form U+EC65; numerical lowercase koppa, U+03DF, has been lowered so that the open loop sits on the baseline and there is a descender; the double vertical bar, U+205B, and the double square brackets, U+301A, U+301B, have been given heavier verticals so that they appear more legible and uniform at small sizes. Also, a large number of unusual precomposed combinations (and corresponding OpenType ligature instructions) and a few PUA glyphs (U+EC55 through U+EC71) have been added. A table of these new items has been added to the listing on this GreekKeys website (Technical Details).

December 10, 2009: Version 3.61 of New Athena Unicode font (newathu.ttf, dated November 11, 2009) has been released. This version was produced in response to a request for glyph variants for some papyrological symbols. The additions are: U+EC51 (4 chalkoi = half obolos), U+EC52 (drachme), U+EC53 and U+ED54 (two variants of etos). The font is otherwise unchanged. For a text-document showing the list of the codepoints and glyph names in this version of the font, excluding the precomposed glyphs for dotted letters (this is an edited extract of a Unicode cmap table in the font), click here. It can be opened with your browser and searched, or downloaded and searched with a word processor or text editor.

October 24, 2009: Version 3.60 of New Athena Unicode font (newathu.ttf, dated October 24, 2009) has been released. The only change is in the Cyrillic characters (U+0401 through U+045F), which have been made uniform in height for proper appearance in printing.

September 23, 2009: Version 3.502 (superseding September 6, 2009: Version 3.50) of New Athena Unicode font (newathu.ttf, dated Sept. 23, 2009) has been released. 3.502 contains very minor additions for a special papyrological need: four glyphs have been added for eta with breve, eta with macron, omega with breve, omega with macron, and OpenType ligature definitions added. These can be displayed only when ligatures are turned on (MS Word 2008); to enter them, you must type the vowel normally and then input U+0304 (combining macron) or U+0306 (combining breve) immediately after the vowel (you can do this in Mac OS X by switching to Unicode Hex input and typing 0304 or 0306 while continuously holding down the option key; there is no direct method for this with Mac GreekKeys Unicode input). In 3.5 several glyphs have been added to the set of Roman characters in the font to complete the set of what is needed for the transliteration of Arabic in papyrological studies. In addition, some major and minor revisions have been made in certain sets of characters: the numbers 0-9 have been redesigned as modern in form, replacing the old-form numbers that had been in the font; certain lowercase Roman characters that had been noticeably shorter than others have been revised to match the others; irregularities in the heights of uppercase Greek characters have been greatly reduced. Some of these changes bring with them slight differences in the widths of characters, so some changes in line breaks and pagination may occur in older documents once they are displayed with this version of the font.

August 29, 2009: Version 3.45 of New Athena Unicode font (newathu.ttf, dated August 21, 2009) has been released. The only difference in this version is that there are three additional symbols added to support New Testament textual studies: U+1D459 (italic l), U+1D513 (Fraktur P), U+1D516 (Fraktur S).

January 24, 2009: Version 3.4 of New Athena Unicode font (newathu.ttf, dated January 24, 2009) has been released. Version 3.4 is identical to Version 3.3 except for the embedded copyright and license information, which has been updated to reflect use of the Open Font License referred to above. For a text-document showing the list of the codepoints and glyph names in the font, excluding the precomposed glyphs for dotted letters (this is an edited extract of a Unicode cmap table in the font), click here (same file as provided for 3.2). It can be opened with your browser and searched, or downloaded and searched with a word processor or text editor.

May 10, 2008: Version 3.3 of New Athena Unicode font (newathu.ttf, dated April 20, 2008) has been released. Version 3.3 contains a few corrected glyphs, but the most important change is the addition of precomposed glyphs for dotted letters for Greek and Coptic papyrology, with the corresponding OpenType ligature definitions.

February 9, 2008: Version 3.2 of New Athena Unicode font (newathu.ttf, dated January 12, 2008) is being released simultaneously with the release of GreekKeys 2008. Version 3.2 contains only one corrected glyph (for a mistake in consistency of size), but the most important change is the the omission of the AAT ligature definitions, so that now the ligatures work only in applications that can read OpenType ligature definitions. The OpenType definitions work, whereas there are bugs in the implementation of the AAT definitions.

December 27, 2007: Version 3.1 of New Athena Unicode font (newathu.ttf, dated December 27, 2007) incorporates a few additional characters. In addition, the OpenType ligature tables have been revised slightly in preparation for the release of GreekKeys 2008 in a few months. For details, see the Revision History in the About document included in the download.

June 26, 2007: Version 3 of New Athena Unicode font (newathu.ttf, dated June 3, 2007) incorporates a few additional characters and the Old Italic block (Etruscan), and some characters have been redrawn for greater consistency. In addition, the OpenType ligature tables have been duplicated and revised to provide compatibility with applications that expect slightly different settings. For details, see the Revision History in the About document included in the download.

August 20/August 7, 2006: Version 2.86 of New Athena Unicode, dated August 20, 2006, replaces version 2.8 (July 24, 2006) or 2.85 (August 10, 2006), with a few additional glyphs added to reflect Unicode 5.0 and six epigraphic characters recently approved for a future version. Version 2.86 adds two Private Use Areas for Coptic papyrology, precomposed coptic iota and upsilon with diaeresis at U+EC4F and U+EC50. Otherwise, versions 2.8 and 2.85 contain a few corrections over 2.7 and for the first time OpenType ligature features that allow the inputting of decomposed Unicode Greek in OpenType-savvy applications (like Mellel and InDesign CS2). The font will work the same as before with GreekKeys Unicode input (which inputs precomposed codepoints and PUA codepoints). With this version, the separate provision of a dfont format font is discontinued, since the ttf format works exactly the same. If you install this version, please be sure you first uninstall New Athena Unicode.dfont, if that is the version you have been using. Anyone who wishes to experiment with decomposed Unicode input may contact me to obtain the testing version of GKUdecomposed input (for US keyboards only).

March 24, 2006: Version 2.7 of New Athena Unicode, dated March 22 (or 24 for dfont format), 2006, contains additional combining diacritics and one new PUA character for a precomposed glyph used rarely in Coptic texts. Other minor corrections have been made in processing the font for the first time with FontLab Studio 5. A Coptic Unicode input for Mac OS X will be made available shortly. The download includes a document with the correction history of the font.

October 1, 2005: Version 2.6 of New Athena Unicode, dated September 30, 2005, contains the addition of a few characters to complete the sets needed for Coptic and for Demotic Egyptian transliteration. The glyphs for the endash and emdash have also been modified (made thicker). This version coincides with a slight revision of the OS X input for Demotic Egyptian.

July 19, 2005: Version 2.5 of New Athena Unicode, dated July 19, 2005, contains a few corrections and the addition of a few new characters, principally to meet the needs of Roman transliteration of Demotic Egyptian in a Unicode-based font (more information and an input for Demotic Egyptian are available). Some of the corrections include resizing of Greek lowercase characters that had somehow become out of proportion to the rest of the set during the repeated process of regenerating the font over the past few years. Therefore, this download is recommended for all users. The download includes a document with further information.

June 7, 2005: Version 2.4 of New Athena Unicode, dated June 6, 2005, contains a few corrections and the addition of many new characters: (1) the new Coptic block of Unicode 4.1 has been added, and the Coptic characters in the old Greek and Coptic block are also present; (2) the inventory of the font's characters has been compared to the May 27, 2005, version of the TLG's quickbeta.pdf and almost all official codepoints that have TLG betacode equivalents are now included in the the font (the exception is astrological symbols).

April 17, 2005: Version 2.3 of New Athena Unicode, dated April 17, 2005, corrects the vertical placement of the upper half brackets (U+2308, U+2309) and provides a wider overscore character (U+0305) for papyrological use (adjacent letters sharing an overstroke should usually now appear with the overstrokes joined into one line). This upgrade is recommended for those with papyrological interests.

March 1, 2005: Version 2.2 of the font New Athena Unicode, dated March 1, 2005, (for the dfont format) or February 27, 2005 (for the ttf format) corrects (it is hoped) a problem with character spacing in Windows applications. Refinements have also been made to character spacing, and all Greek vowels of the same class should now be of the same vertical size and (unless diacritics prevent it) of the same width. The g with cedilla character (U+0123) has been corrected. This download is optional for Macintosh users, but recommended for Windows users.

Jan. 16, 2005: Version 2.1 of the font New Athena Unicode dated Jan. 15, 2005, is now available for download. The sole change from v. 2.0 is the correction of the four dot punctuation U+2058 (formerly a square of four dots, now a diamond pattern; the documentation available earlier did not yet reveal this detail.).

Sept. 27, 2004: Version 2 of the font New Athena Unicode, dated September 26, 2004, was released. This version features various minor improvements and has hundreds of additional characters: all the symbols previously available in the non-standard-encoded SymbolAthenian font are now present with Unicode codepoints, as are many other symbols recently accepted into the Unicode standard (based largely on proposals made by TLG). Further documentation of the font is available in the GreekKeys 2005 release.

GreekKeys Support by Donald Mastronarde, © American Philological Association 2008.