Including Specific Characters with Google Web Fonts

Question

I'm using the Open Sans web font from Google Web Fonts on my website. I only need the basic latin subset, but I do use the Psi (Ψ) character quite often as well and I would like to use the Open Sans version of that character, without having to include the entire greek subset.

I looked at this help page which shows how to embed specific characters only using the text parameter, but there's no mention of including specific characters. I tried doing the following to try to combine both font requests into one, but it didn't end up working.

<link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans:400,400italic,700&subset=latin' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>
<link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans:400,400italic,700&text=%CE%A8' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>

Is there anyway to accomplish this?

Answer 1

I have had problems with subsets of Google fonts in different browsers (I suspect the & vs. & is the culprit) but if you don't need (or can accept not using) the Psi character in 400, 400italic, and 700, you could try removing that requirement from you request and see if it helps.

Also, in a recent Google HTML/CSS styleguide they advocate omitting character references and using the actual character--even in code--unless it carries a special meaning in HTML (like 'greater than' and 'less than' symbols). Good luck.

Answer 2

It looks like that you don't need to use the subset function as well, as it says on that page:

Note: there's no need to specify the subset= parameter when using text= as it allows you to refer to any character in the original font.