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EB Garamond: A better class of open-source font

Georg Duffner’s EB Garamond, according to its official website, “is an open source project to create a revival of Claude Garamont’s famous humanist typeface from the mid-16th century.”

It has true italics, true bold (more like semi-bold), true subscripts and superscripts, true swash caps and true small caps (including true capital ß – see Ralf Herrmann’s crystal-clear presentation on this). There are old style figures, discretionary ligatures, and work-in-progress initials. And in particular, there is coverage of the Unicode Latin Extended Additional codeblock.

This is not only actually all in a free font, but in one that looks pretty good, as the specimen [PDF] shows:

EB Garamond specimen, p.9
EB Garamond specimen: just... wow.

Although I haven’t given EB Garamond a full tryout yet, I can confirm that it works out of the box in XeTeX, which is probably the tool that can exploit its advantages to the fullest.

A caveat: EB Garamond is work in progress; Cyrillic italics, for example, are clearly provisional at the time of writing, and some outlines were updated as recently as a couple of weeks ago on github. Nonetheless, it will be good enough to set camera-ready copy for many projects as it stands; it is certainly miles ahead of the unspeakable G****** U****** and its ilk. Thankyou, Mr. Duffner.

Files

https://github.com/georgd/EB-Garamond/blob/master/otf/EBGaramond.otf?raw=true
https://github.com/georgd/EB-Granjon/raw/master/OTF/EBGaramondItalic.otf
https://github.com/georgd/EB-Granjon/blob/master/OTF/EBGaramondBold.otf

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Meinert, ‘Buddha in der Jurte’, forthcoming (2011)

Meinert (2011), Buddha in der JurteCarmen Meinert (ed.) with contributions from Andrey Terentyev. Buddha in der Jurte: Buddhistische Kunst aus der Mongolei (Buddha in the Yurt: Buddhist Art from Mongolia). Hirmer Verlag, forthcoming (October 2011). “~750” pp., ~550 Illus. ISBN: 978-3-7774-4231-0.

Official Description
As Buddhist art reached 17th Century Mongolia, it became an established element in the life of believers. These volumes show a representative selection of exquisite objects from a singular private collection and reflect the range of influences from Tibet to the Manchurian Qing dynasty.

[Multi-volume set; to be published in English/Russian and German/Mongolian]

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Liu, ‘dhyānāni tapaś ca’ [Kāyabhāvanāsūtra] (2010)

Liu, Zhen. *Meditations and Asceticisms: On the discovery and study of Buddhist Sanskrit Manuscripts. Shanghai Guji Publishing House, 2010. 299 pp., 58 yuan. ISBN 9787532556670. [WorldCat]

刘震（著）《禅定与苦修—关于佛传原初梵本的发现和研究》上海古籍出版社

This book, as far as I am able to tell from internet gleanings (I’ve not seen it at the time of writing), is a revised and expanded (修订、增补) version of Zhen Liu’s PhD dissertation on a unique Sanskrit manuscript of the Kāyabhāvanāsūtra 《修身经》 of the Dīrghāgama submitted to Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

Further information can be found in this startlingly rich Chinese writeup by an editor at a Chinese publishing house:

Xu, Wenkan（徐文堪）. ‘The Inspiring Results of Research on the Gilgit Manuscripts’（吉尔吉特写本研究的可喜成果）, Dongfang Zaobao 《东方早报》, March 20, 2011.

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Ishida, ‘Dharmottara’s Pramāṇaviniścayaṭīkā 2’ (2011)

Hisataka Ishida. „Dharmottaras Pramāṇaviniścayaṭīkā zum auf der Realität basierenden logischen Nexus“. Ph. D. Dissertation, Philologisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät, Universität Wien, 2011. [official site / PDF]

Vienna is producing dissertations on the pramāṇa manuscripts in China at an impressive rate. I note, however, that projects which might have been expected to showcase the cultural achievements of Tibet do not always turn out that way:

From the Abstract

Since the manuscript is a codex unicus, a diplomatic edition is also included, as is an edition of the Tibetan translation. The [necessity of including the] latter is due to the fact that, upon closer examination, it became apparent that the Tibetan translation shows frequent “deviations”, likely due to the free translation style of the Tibetan translator monk rNgog Lotsaba. These deviations cannot be briefly stated in the critical apparatus of the Sanskrit edition in a manner that would be meaningful for the reader, and thus this edition has been added.

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Zotter, ‘Pūjā-Blüten in Nepal’; on the Puṣpacintāmaṇi (2009)

Flowers for the Newars' Ganesacaturthi
Pflanzen, die von Newars zur Gaṇeśacaturthī verwendet werden

Astrid Zotter (née Krause). ‘Pūjā-Blüten in Nepal: Bestimmungen des Puṣpacintāmaṇi‘. Universität Leipzig: PhD dissertation, 2009. [In German; PDF] 408 pp., illus.

Dr. Zotter’s dissertation on the medieval flower-offering manual Puṣpacintāmaṇi presents a critical edition of the Sanskrit and Newar texts, and discusses the role of this important work in Nepal from the reign of Pratap Malla onwards. This is a new milestone in Newar studies, and more generally another welcome contribution to the study of the transmission of Sanskrit texts and vernacular translations in medieval South Asia. A few words from the abstract (roughly translated):

From the Abstract

The Sanskrit text Puṣpacintāmaṇi (PuCi) treats flower offerings (upacāra) in the most important worship ritual of Hinduism, the pūjā. In 400 verses, about 200 names of flowers prescribed as appropriate or inappropriate gifts for various deities and pūjās are listed. The text is a compilation (nibandha), in which the contents of 47 named source texts are reported. […]

The aim of the thesis is not only to edit this text, which was published for the first time in 1966, anew on the basis of all traditional manuscripts and to translate it for the first time, but also to fit it into its context. Here, the context of the historical development of the text, the position of the PuCi in the textual tradition and the varieties of interpretation are taken into account. […] Continue reading “Zotter, ‘Pūjā-Blüten in Nepal’; on the Puṣpacintāmaṇi (2009)”

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Weiler, ‘Neoclassical Newar Residences’ (2009)

Katharina Maria Lucia Weiler. ‘The Neoclassical Residences of the Newars in Nepal: Transcultural Flows in the Early 20th century Architecture of the Kathmandu Valley’. PhD diss., Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, 2009. [abstract / PDF (40 MB)]

Almost as good as being there, this lavishly illustrated dissertation treats an important architectural subculture of the Kathmandu Valley. Weiler looks closely at the stylistic origins of buildings built by people who wanted to emulate Europe, while remaining tantric Hindus and Buddhists at heart. This lucid description of a relatively recent strand in the rich tapestry of Newar urban life is commended to aficionados of Nepalese taste.

Nike of Samothrace and Śrī yantra at Ananda Niketan

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Fermer, ‘Gong dkar rDo rje gdan pa’, 2009

Mathias Fermer. The Life and Works of Gong dkar rDo rje gdan pa Kun dga’ rnam rgyal (1432-1496) (གོང་དཀར་རྡོ་རྗེ་གདན་པ་ཀུན་དགའ་རྣམ་རྒྱལ་༼༡༤༣༢-༡༤༩༦༽གྱི་ལོ་རྒྱུས་དང་གསུང་རྩོམ་།). M.A. Thesis, Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies, University of Hamburg, 2009. 415 pp.

From the Preface:

Gong dkar rDo rje gdan pa Kun dga' rnam rgyal
Gong dkar Kun dga’ rnam rgyal, alias Gong dkar rDo rje gdan pa or Grwa lnga rgyal po (1432-1496), was one of the great scholar-saints who lived in the religiously highly productive period of the fifteenth century. Today, his religious tradition, which had mainly flourished near its original home in the southern part of Central Tibet (dBus), is commonly referred to as the rDzong tradition (rDzong lugs), a lesser known subsect within the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism. […]

PART I of this thesis gives a rough overview of the religious and political circumstances of Kun dga’ rnam rgyal’s time (chapter 1) and introduces the noble family lineage into which he was born (chapter 2). In PART II, I summarize this master’s life, beginning with an overview of previous modern research (chapter 3), followed by an account of his eventful life (chapter 4) and a discussion on the practice tradition that emerged from him (chapter 5). The next chapter is dedicated to Kun dga’ rnam rgyal’s writings, which will be provided in a composite catalogue of his works and a descriptive catalogue of those texts that have been available to me (chapter 6). PART III consists of the edition (chapter 7) and the translation (chapter 8 ) of the eleventh chapter of his main biography. The translated text gives an impression of how he was perceived as a religious teacher and provides a detailed list of his disciples. In addition, the final section contains several appendices.

Mr. Fermer’s thesis is an impressive piece of work; it won the 2009 Peter Lindegger Preis for graduate students of Tibetan Studies. Plans are, or were, in place to publish the thesis as a monograph. (Here I should disclose my own interest: I receive a mention in the Acknowledgements.)
Moreover, an e-text of the biography is available at Hamburg’s promising Sakya Resource Centre (sakya-resource.de/).

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Dagyab, ‘Tibetisch-buddhistischer Klöster’ (2009)

Dagyab, Namri. Vergleich von Verwaltungsstrukturen und wirtschaftlichen Entscheidungsprozessen tibetisch-buddhistischer Klöster in der Autonomen Region Tibet, China und Indien [A comparison of administrative structures and economic decision-making processes of Tibetan buddhist monasteries in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, China, and India]. PhD diss., Univ. Bonn, 2009, 278 pp. [/PDF]

This dissertation focuses on dGe lugs pa monasteries “not only as especially important centres of Buddhist doctrin[al teaching], but also in terms of their regional social and economic [importance]”, and includes a useful glossary (pp.216–227).