Version 1.0, 17 February 2022
Version history:
1.0, 17 February 2022
About the script
Linear B, the script found on tablets in excavations of Knossos (Crete), Pylos and Mycenae, remained undeciphered for decades, until, in 1952, Michael Ventris (who profited from the preliminary analyses made by Alice Kober) managed to crack the code. Confirmation of the decipherment followed rapidly: Linear B had been used to write the oldest form of Greek know to us, Mycenaean Greek (15th-13th centuries BCE). Linear B consists of about 90 syllabograms, supplemented with about 165 logograms (or ‘ideograms’) and the so-called ‘Aegean numbers’, a numbering system already used by the Minoan civilization (in Linear A). There are word dividers (a small perpendicular line on the baseline). Linear B is exclusively written horizontally from left to right.
Font and font sizes
Only very few fonts support the rendering of Linear B. We have chosen Noto Sans Linear B because it has been professionally designed. Even so, there are a few software issues in typeset text; fortunately these can be remedied by the typesetter, provided that precise instructions are given. Anyone can download and use Noto Sans Linear B at no cost.
Noto Sans Linear B font sizes:
Brill 11 pt ~ Noto Sans Linear B 9¼ pt
Brill 10 pt ~ Noto Sans Linear B 8½ pt
Brill 9 pt ~ Noto Sans Linear B 8 pt
Chapter titles: Brill 16 pt (Bold) ~ Noto Sans Linear B 13½ pt
Software issue: Adobe InDesign ‘hides’ some Linear B characters
Many typesetters use Adobe InDesign to perform page layout for PDF production. It has been observed that Adobe InDesign CC 2022 fails to render a few Linear B characters: they are 𐀀 (U+10000) and 𐀍 (U+1000D), but until the whole character set has been investigated we will not know how many more, if any. The problem seems to be connected with Adobe’s ‘World-Ready Paragraph Composers’, which are the default in Brill publications.
Instruction to typesetters dealing with Linear B text
Adobe InDesign users must switch the paragraph composer applied to all paragraphs containing text in the Linear B script, even if there is just one Linear B character, to either of the older Adobe Paragraph Composers: Adobe Paragraph Composer or the Adobe Single-line Paragraph Composer.
(If such a paragraph also contains complex-script text (this includes any bidirectional script such as Phoenician, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, etc., but also many others!), this would be problematic. In such an event, contact scripts@brill.com. A typesetting program other than Adobe InDesign (think LuaTeX as used by TAT Zetwerk) will probably not exhibit this bug.)
All Brill personnel sending textual material containing Linear B text to typesetting service providers who use Adobe InDesign must send along the above instruction with each batch containing Linear B material.
