Linux Libertine is a digital typeface created by the Libertine Open Fonts Project, which aims to create free and open

Foss

Foss may refer toPeople*Foss , people with the last name Foss*Foss Shanahan , New Zealand diplomat*Foss Westcott , English bishop...

 alternatives to Proprietary software

Proprietary software

Proprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.Complementary...

 typefaces such Times Roman

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...

. It is developed with the free font editor 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 is licensed 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....

 and the 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...

.

Characteristics

Linux Libertine is a proportional serif typeface that looks like 19th century book type, but includes features designed for modern use. It contains more than 2,000 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, including support for many different languages including, Latin

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...

, Greek

Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...

, Cyrillic

Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...

 and Hebrew

Hebrew alphabet

The Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, or more historically, the Assyrian script, is used in the writing of the Hebrew language, as well as other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic. There have been two...

 typesets. Additionally it offers several ligatures

Ligature (typography)

In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes are joined as a single glyph. Ligatures usually replace consecutive characters sharing common components and are part of a more general class of glyphs called "contextual forms", where the specific shape of a letter depends on...

 (such as ff, fi, and ct), the recently added capital ß

Capital ß

Capital sharp s is the contestable majuscule of eszett. Sharp s is nearly unique among the letters of the Latin alphabet in that it has no traditional upper case form . This is because it never occurs initially in German text, and traditional German printing never used all-caps...

, and has special characters such as International Phonetic Alphabet

International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...

 characters, arrows, floral symbols, Roman numbers, Text figures

Text figures

Text figures are numerals typeset with varying heights in a fashion that resembles a typical line of running text, hence the name...

, and small caps

Small caps

In typography, small capitals are uppercase characters set at the same height and weight as surrounding lowercase letters or text figures...

. The 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...

 implementation allows automatic positioning and substitution, including true fractions, ligatures and kerning

Kerning

In typography, kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning is the adjustment of the space between individual letter forms vs. tracking which is the uniform adjustment of spacing applied over a...

.

, the following faces are available in TTF, OTF and source code

Source code

In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...

:

• Regular
• Bold
• Italic
• Bold italic
• Small capitals

Usage

Wikipedia's logo

Logo of Wikipedia

The logo of Wikipedia, an Internet-based free multilingual encyclopedia, is an unfinished globe constructed from jigsaw pieces—some pieces are still missing at the top—inscribed with glyphs from many different writing systems...

 features the Linux Libertine font. There is also a complementary organic sans-serif face, Linux Biolinum. Both the Linux Libertine and Linux Biolinum typefaces are used by the open-source design publication Libre Graphics Magazine.

Special glyphs

Linux Libertine includes the Tux

Tux

Tux is a penguin character and the official mascot of the Linux kernel. Originally created as an entry to a Linux logo competition, Tux is the most commonly used icon for Linux, although different Linux distributions depict Tux in various styles. In video games featuring the character, female...

 logo at the Unicode code point U+E000.

See also

• Free software Unicode typefaces
  Free software Unicode typefaces
  A few projects exist to provide free and open-source Unicode typefaces, i.e. Unicode typefaces which are open-source and designed to contain glyphs of all Unicode characters. However there are also numerous projects aimed at providing only a certain script, such as the Arabeyes Arabic font...
  
  
• List of typefaces
• Unicode fonts
• 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....
  
  
• 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...
  
  

External links

• Official Web Site