I am happy to say that Merriweather will come with Extended Cyrillic not just the basic Cyrillic. Images of the Cyrillic glyphs should start being posted this week.
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Exactly what do you mean by Extended Cyrillic? What non-Slavic languages are you catering for?
The languages I have been able to confirm support for so far include Russian, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Macedonian and Serbian. There may be others but I have not been able to confirm they are complete yet. For instance ( and a bit randomly) I suspect I have support for Kildin Sami and Abkhazian. Is there a language you would like to see in particular?
I would like to see full support for Azerbaijani. It uses all the special characters from Turkish, and there is only one letter missing, the schwa (Ə ə), but it’s hard to find fonts that contain those glyphs, because they are located in Latin Extended-B and IPA Extensions, even though it is the most common letter in Azerbaijani.
It does support Turkish letters and that letter (Ə ə) in upper and lowercase. Also Ӛ ӛ. Also Ҽ, Ҿ, ҽ, ҿ.
I’ll just let you know that Latin schwa and Cyrillic schwa are different codepoints, although they share the same glyph. The Latin schwa (U+018F, U+0259) is used in Azerbaijani, whereas the Cyrillic schwa (U+1240, U+1241), is used in Abkhaz and Kurdish.
When I look up the Unicode (U+1240, U+1241) I get the ETHIOPIC SYLLABLE QU. The schwa I see for cyrillic is (afii10846/ U+04D9) + (U+04D8). U+04D9 is listed as “DEC 1241” and 04D8 as “DEC 1240” however which explains the numbers you are referencing. Merriweather does not meaningfully cover Latin B at this point. It may get a couple of glyphs. Perhaps it will expand to this at a later date.
In the meantime I have a question for you: Do you like to see the Upper Case or capital for of the Azerbaijani/Cyrillic schwa with a smooth upper terminal similar to the inverted e such is seen in Times or do you prefer to see it with an exaggerated serif as you can see in Times New Roman or in a more subtle way in Arno Pro? I am starting to lean towards the Arno model with a subtle serif or the smooth one.
I noticed that the subtle serif of Arno Pro matches the lower serif on the capital C. Try using the lower serif on the C, maybe slightly reduced.
Disclaimer: I have absolutely no idea about Azerbaijani typography, I’m commenting on a purely aesthetic basis.
That was what I wanted to hear – about your aesthetic preference. Thank you!
Any updates yet?
The Azeri letters have been added. There are also quite a lot for other Cyrillic using languages. I am still making a few adjustments but mostly I am working on the 4 weights now.
Can I expect to see all four weights finished by October 16? I’m building a website using Merriweather, and the fact that the regular weight still doesn’t have full support for Latin Extended-A is holding me back .
Yes. You can expect that. The question may be will Google make the live quickly. Progress on a new system for updating fonts is being rapidly made now. Also, you can get them from me and host them locally if there is a delay at Google.