Talven Text font log

Version 0.101, 3 October 2026

Renamed the project from Aperture Text to Talven Text after a public font-name search found existing Aperture families. Rebuilt all font files with the new family, full, unique, and PostScript names. Updated the website, source filenames, and download packages. Outlines, spacing, character coverage, and the weight range are unchanged.

The project moved to /Users/watzon/Projects/personal/talven-text. See NAMING.md for the name check.

Version 0.100, 2 October 2026

Independent prototype for Latin body text. This is a derivative of Atkinson Hyperlegible Next, with new drawings and proportion changes. It has not undergone a controlled reader study.

Upstream source

• Project: Atkinson Hyperlegible Next.
• Commit: 7925f50f649b3813257faf2f4c0b381011f434f1.
• Input: sources/AtkinsonHyperlegibleNext.glyphs.
• Input SHA-256: ddf54acf72c41905e327270abf66a0d6eb479455be103cff4511746f43e628d0.
• License: SIL Open Font License 1.1. See OFL.txt.
• Upstream designers: Elliott Scott, Megan Eiswerth, Linus Boman, Theodore Petrosky, and Letters from Sweden.
• Upstream font engineering and QA credit: Emma Marichal, as listed in the source project.

The original authors and Braille Institute have not endorsed Talven Text.

Outline and spacing changes

The build script makes each change across all four source masters before compilation.

1. Replace c, e, l, I, one, r, and zero with compatible custom contours. The c has a wider mouth. The e has a raised crossbar. The l has a longer curved foot. The I has short horizontal bars. The 1 has a diagonal flag and a baseline foot. The r has a curved shoulder. The 0 has a central dot in place of the source slash.
2. Raise coordinates between the baseline and x-height by the ratio 520/496. Taper the change to zero at the 668-unit cap height. Keep negative coordinates and coordinates at or above cap height unchanged. This changes lowercase size and the middle proportions of capitals and other glyphs.
3. Rebuild composed variants of the edited bases. Explicitly rebuild ç, ę, Į, and ł, because the source stores these as independent outlines. Keep extra side space for side accents such as ľ. Align mark anchors with the changed glyphs.
4. Add 5 units to each side of positive-width glyphs. Add a further 14 units to spaces, for a total space increase of 24 units. Combining marks keep zero advance.
5. Preserve the upstream kerning model and language substitutions. Keep tabular digits at a shared advance. Updated 0 and 1 shapes also appear in tabular figures.

The exact numeric geometry is in source/build.py. The source contains the upstream input, editable UFO masters, and a designspace. The included manifest records the shipped binaries.

Font engineering

• Weight axis: 300 to 700, default 400. Five named weights: Light, Regular, Medium, Semibold, and Bold.
• Preserve the upstream nonlinear weight mapping within this range.
• Rebuild TrueType variation, positioning, substitution, and metric tables.
• Use a new family identity and preserve license and copyright records.
• Use standard smart dropout control. The font has no manual or automatic outline hinting.
• Keep proportional figures by default. The tnum feature selects tabular figures.
• Preserve fractions, superscripts, and language substitutions from the source.
• Prune unreachable source helper glyphs from shipping binaries.
• Ship one variable TTF, one variable WOFF2, and five static TTFs.

Scope

This is an upright Latin family. No italic has been drawn. Greek and Cyrillic alphabets are not supported. Some symbols from other blocks are present, but their presence does not imply script support. The full codepoint list is in character-coverage.txt.

The website uses synthetic italics only if a browser or downstream site explicitly permits them. Its own styles disable font synthesis.