Church Slavonic : For Users

You can easily enter, edit, and publish Church Slavonic texts in standard, popular software.

Google Docs

The easiest way to work with Church Slavonic texts is in Google Docs. For this you do not need to install any specialized software or fonts. Simply open a new document and select one of our fonts. To do this, in the Font menu click More fonts, then in the window type the name of the font into the search bar. Only those fonts that have been added to Google Fonts are available: for now you can use Pochaevsk, Ponomar, Triodion, Monomakh or Shafarik.

fonts in Google Docs

This functionality works also in the mobile version of the app on Android, but the Church Slavonic font needs to be first selected in the desktop version of the document.

fonts in Android

Unfortunately it is not possible to indicate that the language of the document is Church Slavonic, so spell checking and hyphenation are not supported.

LibreOffice

The most versatile software for Church Slavonic is LibreOffice. Starting with version 5.0, it allows you to specify Church Slavonic (which it calls Church Slavic) as a document language. You can then take advantage of a number of features such as Cyrillic numerals (for page numbering, etc.), hyphenation and spell checking.

Microsoft Office

Starting with Microsoft Office 2016, you can edit Church Slavonic texts without needing to install any additional software. Simply install the Church Slavonic fonts from our site and, if needed, the Church Slavonic keyboard drivers for Windows.

Then select the font in Office and display / edit your text. In order to support all of the font features (such as ligatures), you may need to turn on advanced font features. To do this, open the Font dialog and click on the Advanced tab. Then, under OpenType Features select All from the dropdown menu labeled Ligatures. Stylistic sets may also be turned on by selecting them from the dropdown menu labeled Stylistic sets.

MS Word

Note the following limitations:

As well, Microsoft still does not recognize Church Slavonic as a valid language, so hyphenation and spellchecking are not available, even as third-party extensions. We suggest using LibreOffice instead, or complaining to Microsoft Technical Support.

XeTeX and LuaTeX

To work with Church Slavonic texts in TeX, you will need to use a modern Unicode-compatible TeX engine such as XeTeX or LuaTeX. Both are part of the TeX Live distribution. If you have a complete TeX Live installation, you will have the churchslavonic package. This means that you can now type Church Slavonic texts using the standard commands of Polyglossia. The churchslavonic package offers additional macros for Cyrillic numerals, drop caps and other features. See the documentation for Polyglossia and churchslavonic for details.

Visual Studio Code

If you use TeX, develop webistes, or write code, you will find Visual Studio Code useful. It is a free, portable source code editor that can be used, among other things, for editing the raw Church Slavonic liturgical texts stored in XML and Markdown formats.

VS Code

To set up editing Church Slavonic texts in Visual Studio Code:

Adobe InDesign

Once you have installed the Church Slavonic fonts from this page, you should be able to work with Church Slavonic texts in Adobe InDesign. To get support for Church Slavonic hyphenation and spellchecking, download the Church Slavonic Dictionary Extension for LibreOffce; then follow the instructions to install it into InDesign. Automated page numbering using Cyrillic numerals is not available. If you need it, ask Adobe to add this feature.

Where is the letter / symbol that I need?

Tables of Church Slavonic letters and other symbols are available in the documentation:

I need help!

If you are having difficulties, all questions may be addressed to the SCI-Users mailing list.