Free software Unicode typefaces
Encyclopedia
A few projects exist to provide free and open-source Unicode typefaces, i.e. Unicode typefaces
which are open-source and designed to contain glyph
s of all Unicode
characters. However there are also numerous projects aimed at providing only a certain script, such as the Arabeyes
Arabic font. The advantage of targeting only some scripts with a font
was that certain Unicode characters should be rendered differently depending on which language they are used in. Unicode fonts in modern formats such as OpenType
provide the same by containing multiple glyphs per character. (See also: Han unification
)
is a bitmap
-based font created by Roman Czyborra that is present in most free operating system
s and windowing systems such as Linux
, XFree86
or the X.Org Server
. The development and maintenance of this font has been taken over by David Starner from the Debian
project. The font is released under the GNU General Public License
.
. It also supports several font formats, including PostScript
, TrueType
, and OpenType
. For this reason the fonts are derived from original work made in FontForge
, and stored in .sfd (Spline Font Database) files. The most recent release is from October 2010.
offers a large number of fonts, editors, translation and book production systems as part of their goal to bridge the digital divide
to minority languages. This site contains many utilities for Windows systems, including right-to-left editors, keymappers, RTF translators, and high-quality, free Unicode fonts.
SIL publish their fonts under their own SIL Open Font License
. Typefaces include Charis SIL
, Doulos SIL
and Gentium
.
Armenian
, Cherokee, Coptic, Cypriot Syllabary
, Cyrillic, Deseret, Georgian, Glagolitic, Gothic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Limbu, Linear B
(partial coverage), Old Italic, Old Persian cuneiform, Osmanya, Phoenician
, Shavian, Syloti Nagri (no conjuncts), Tai Le (no combining tone marks), Thaana, Tifinagh, Ugaritic, and Vietnamese.
They are based on fonts designed by URW++ Design and Development Incorporated, and offer lookalikes for Courier
, Helvetica
, Times
, Palatino
, and New Century Schoolbook.
Unicode typefaces
A Unicode font is a computer font that contains a wide range of characters, letters, digits, glyphs, symbols, ideograms, logograms, etc., which are collectively mapped into the standard Universal Character Set, derived from many different languages and scripts from around the world...
which are open-source and designed to contain glyph
Glyph
A glyph is an element of writing: an individual mark on a written medium that contributes to the meaning of what is written. A glyph is made up of one or more graphemes....
s of all Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
characters. However there are also numerous projects aimed at providing only a certain script, such as the Arabeyes
Arabeyes
Arabeyes is a Free Open Source project that is aimed at fully supporting the Arabic language in the Unix/Linux environment. It was established in early 2001 by a number of Arab Linux enthusiasts.- Project :...
Arabic font. The advantage of targeting only some scripts with a font
Font
In typography, a font is traditionally defined as a quantity of sorts composing a complete character set of a single size and style of a particular typeface...
was that certain Unicode characters should be rendered differently depending on which language they are used in. Unicode fonts in modern formats such as OpenType
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior...
provide the same by containing multiple glyphs per character. (See also: Han unification
Han unification
Han unification is an effort by the authors of Unicode and the Universal Character Set to map multiple character sets of the so-called CJK languages into a single set of unified characters. Han characters are a common feature of written Chinese , Japanese , Korean , and—at least historically—other...
)
GNU Unifont
GNU UnifontGNU Unifont
The GNU Unifont by Roman Czyborra is a free bitmap font that covers the Unicode Basic Multilingual Plane , using an intermediate bitmapped font format....
is a bitmap
Bitmap
In computer graphics, a bitmap or pixmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to...
-based font created by Roman Czyborra that is present in most free operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s and windowing systems such as Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, XFree86
XFree86
XFree86 is an implementation of the X Window System. It was originally written for Unix-like operating systems on IBM PC compatibles and is now available for many other operating systems and platforms. It is free and open source software under the XFree86 License version 1.1. It is developed by the...
or the X.Org Server
X.Org Server
X.Org Server refers to the X server release packages stewarded by the X.Org Foundation,which is hosted by freedesktop.org, and grants...
. The development and maintenance of this font has been taken over by David Starner from the Debian
Debian
Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
project. The font is released under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
.
Free UCS Outline Fonts
The Free UCS Outline Fonts (also known as freefont) is a font collection project. The project was started by Primož Peterlin and is currently administered by Steve White. The aim of this project has been to produce a package of fonts by collecting existing free fonts and special donations, to support as many Unicode characters as possible. The font family is released as GNU FreeFont under the GNU General Public LicenseGNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
. It also supports several font formats, including PostScript
PostScript
PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...
, TrueType
TrueType
TrueType is an outline font standard originally developed by Apple Computer in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript...
, and OpenType
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior...
. For this reason the fonts are derived from original work made in FontForge
FontForge
FontForge is a typeface editor program developed by George Williams. FontForge is free software and is distributed under the BSD license. FontForge is available for several operating systems and is localized in several languages.- Features :Fontforge supports many font formats, including...
, and stored in .sfd (Spline Font Database) files. The most recent release is from October 2010.
SIL fonts
SIL InternationalSIL International
SIL International is a U.S.-based, worldwide, Christian non-profit organization, whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy, translate the Christian Bible into local languages,...
offers a large number of fonts, editors, translation and book production systems as part of their goal to bridge the digital divide
Digital divide
The Digital Divide refers to inequalities between individuals, households, business, and geographic areas at different socioeconomic levels in access to information and communication technologies and Internet connectivity and in the knowledge and skills needed to effectively use the information...
to minority languages. This site contains many utilities for Windows systems, including right-to-left editors, keymappers, RTF translators, and high-quality, free Unicode fonts.
SIL publish their fonts under their own SIL Open Font License
SIL Open Font License
The SIL Open Font License is a free and open source license designed for fonts by SIL International for use with some of their Unicode fonts. The license is considered free by the Free Software Foundation, which states that a simple hello world program is enough to satisfy the license's requirement...
. Typefaces include Charis SIL
Charis SIL
Charis SIL is a glyphic serif typeface developed by SIL International. It is based on Bitstream Charter, one of the first fonts designed for laser printers...
, Doulos SIL
Doulos SIL
Doulos SIL is a serif typeface developed by SIL International, very similar to Times or Times New Roman. Unlike Times New Roman, Doulos only has a single face, Regular...
and Gentium
Gentium
Gentium is a Unicode serif typeface designed by Victor Gaultney. Gentium fonts are free and open source software, and are released under the SIL Open Font License , which permits modification and redistribution. Gentium has wide support for languages using the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets,...
.
MPH 2B Damase
Mark Williamson's MPH 2B Damase is a free font encoding many non-Latin scripts, including the Unicode 4.1 scripts in the Supplementary Multilingual Plane:Armenian
Armenian alphabet
The Armenian alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Armenian language since the year 405 or 406. It was devised by Saint Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian linguist and ecclesiastical leader, and contained originally 36 letters. Two more letters, օ and ֆ, were added in the Middle Ages...
, Cherokee, Coptic, Cypriot Syllabary
Cypriot syllabary
The Cypriot syllabary is a syllabic script used in Iron Age Cyprus, from ca. the 11th to the 4th centuries BCE, when it was replaced by the Greek alphabet. A pioneer of that change was king Evagoras of Salamis...
, Cyrillic, Deseret, Georgian, Glagolitic, Gothic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Limbu, Linear B
Linear B
Linear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, an early form of Greek. It pre-dated the Greek alphabet by several centuries and seems to have died out with the fall of Mycenaean civilization...
(partial coverage), Old Italic, Old Persian cuneiform, Osmanya, Phoenician
Phoenician alphabet
The Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto-Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, was a non-pictographic consonantal alphabet, or abjad. It was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia...
, Shavian, Syloti Nagri (no conjuncts), Tai Le (no combining tone marks), Thaana, Tifinagh, Ugaritic, and Vietnamese.
IndUni fonts
The IndUni fonts is a GPL-licensed font family with many accents and combining characters, especially suitable for Indic, Indian and Nepali, (Sanskrit, Prakrit, Hindi) and Middle Eastern languages and Urdu in transliteration. It also includes characters for Avestan and for the Pinyin representation of Chinese, a set of Cyrillic characters and a basic set of Greek letters. The fonts implement almost the whole of the Multilingual European Subset 1 of Unicode. Also provided are keyboard handlers for Windows and the Mac, making input very easy.They are based on fonts designed by URW++ Design and Development Incorporated, and offer lookalikes for Courier
Courier (typeface)
Courier is a monospaced slab serif typeface designed to resemble the output from a strike-on typewriter. The typeface was designed by Howard "Bud" Kettler in 1955...
, Helvetica
Helvetica
Helvetica is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann.-Visual distinctive characteristics:Characteristics of this typeface are:lower case:square dot over the letter i....
, Times
Times Roman
Times New Roman is a serif typeface commissioned by the British newspaper The Times in 1931, created by Victor Lardent at the English branch of Monotype. It was commissioned after Stanley Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically antiquated...
, Palatino
Palatino
Palatino is the name of a large typeface family that began as an old style serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf initially released in 1948 by the Linotype foundry.In 1999, Zapf revised Palatino for Linotype and Microsoft, called Palatino Linotype...
, and New Century Schoolbook.
Other
- Bitstream VeraBitstream VeraVera is a group typeface with a liberal license.It was designed by Jim Lyles from Bitstream, and it is closely based on Bitstream's Prima, for which Lyles was also responsible. It is a TrueType font with full hinting instructions, which improve its rendering quality on low-resolution devices such...
(license) - Caslon RomanCaslon RomanCaslon Roman is a serif style Caslon family TrueType Unicode font, developed by George Williams. It is available free, under BSD-like license or SIL Open Font License.-Character Coverage:...
("BSD-like" license) - DejaVu fontsDejaVu fontsThe DejaVu fonts are modifications of the Bitstream Vera fonts designed for greater coverage of Unicode, as well as providing more styles. The Bitstream Vera family was limited mainly to the characters in the Basic Latin and Latin-1 Supplement portions of Unicode but was released with a license...
(license), a modification and wide extension of Bitstream Vera fonts - Droid fonts (Apache licenseApache LicenseThe Apache License is a copyfree free software license authored by the Apache Software Foundation . The Apache License requires preservation of the copyright notice and disclaimer....
), a collection of fonts developed for Google's Android mobile phone operating system - Fixedsys ExcelsiorFixedsys ExcelsiorFixedsys Excelsior is an unofficial pan-Unicode extension of the popular Microsoft font Fixedsys. The current version, last updated in 2007, is 3.01....
(public domainPublic domainWorks are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
) - GentiumGentiumGentium is a Unicode serif typeface designed by Victor Gaultney. Gentium fonts are free and open source software, and are released under the SIL Open Font License , which permits modification and redistribution. Gentium has wide support for languages using the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets,...
(OFLSIL Open Font LicenseThe SIL Open Font License is a free and open source license designed for fonts by SIL International for use with some of their Unicode fonts. The license is considered free by the Free Software Foundation, which states that a simple hello world program is enough to satisfy the license's requirement...
) - GhostscriptGhostscriptGhostscript is a suite of software based on an interpreter for Adobe Systems' PostScript and Portable Document Format page description languages.- Features :...
URW ++ Type 1 fonts, a free alternatives to 35 basic PostScript fonts (GPLGNU General Public LicenseThe GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
, AFPLAladdin Free Public LicenseThe Aladdin Free Public License, abbreviated AFPL, is a license written by L. Peter Deutsch for his Ghostscript PostScript language interpreter.-History:The license was derived from the GNU General Public License, but differs on two key points:...
, LPPLLaTeX Project Public LicenseThe LaTeX Project Public License is a software license originally written for the LaTeX system. Software distributed under the terms of the LPPL can be regarded as free software, however it is not copylefted....
) - e.g. Type 1 version of Nimbus Roman No9 L, Nimbus Sans L, Nimbus Mono LNimbus Mono LNimbus Mono is a monospaced typeface created by URW Studio in 1984, and eventually released under the GPL and AFPL in 1996 and LPPL in 2009. It features Normal, Bold, Italic, and Bold Italic weights, and is one of several freely licensed fonts offered by URW++...
, URW Bookman L, URW Gothic L and others Hanazono Minchō (permissive license). One of the few free software fonts that includes the whole CJK Unified Ideographs Extension C block, as well as many other (related) CJKV characters, such as the Kangxi Radicals and CJK Radicals Supplement blocks). - JunicodeJunicodeJunicode is a free old-style serif typeface developed by Peter S. Baker of the University of Virginia. The design is based on a 17th century typeface used in Oxford, England....
(GPL) - Linux LibertineLinux LibertineLinux Libertine is a digital typeface created by the Libertine Open Fonts Project, which aims to create free and open alternatives to Proprietary software typefaces such Times Roman...
(GPL, OFLSIL Open Font LicenseThe SIL Open Font License is a free and open source license designed for fonts by SIL International for use with some of their Unicode fonts. The license is considered free by the Free Software Foundation, which states that a simple hello world program is enough to satisfy the license's requirement...
) - Liberation fontsLiberation fontsLiberation is the collective name of four TrueType font families: Liberation Sans, Liberation Sans Narrow, Liberation Serif and Liberation Mono...
(GPLGNU General Public LicenseThe GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
+ font exception) - M+ FontsM+ FontsM+ FONTS are Japanese font families designed by Coji Morishita. The 'M' stands for 'Minimum', while the plus sign means above minimum.-M+ BITMAP FONTS:M+ BITMAP FONTS consists of raster fonts, originally developed in 2002.-Font list:...
(Free LicenseFree licenseA free license is a license which grants recipients rights to modify and redistribute the software or the content, which would otherwise be prohibited by copyright law.* Free software licence* Free content license...
, Not GPL, http://mplus-fonts.sourceforge.jp/mplus-outline-fonts/index-en.html#license) - Old Standard A Unicode font family for classical, medieval and Slavic studies (GPL, OFLSIL Open Font LicenseThe SIL Open Font License is a free and open source license designed for fonts by SIL International for use with some of their Unicode fonts. The license is considered free by the Free Software Foundation, which states that a simple hello world program is enough to satisfy the license's requirement...
)
See also
- List of typefaces
- Unicode fontsUnicode typefacesA Unicode font is a computer font that contains a wide range of characters, letters, digits, glyphs, symbols, ideograms, logograms, etc., which are collectively mapped into the standard Universal Character Set, derived from many different languages and scripts from around the world...
- List of CJK fonts
External links
- Google Font Directory
- Unicode Font Guide For Free/Libre Open Source Operating Systems, a huge index of high quality free fonts
- SIL's freeware fonts, editors and documentation
- GNU Unifont
- Unicode FAQ for UNIX systems
- Unicode fonts and tools for X11
- Free Font Compilation made from the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. The fonts can be downloaded individually or as a complete package ready with installers for Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows