Open-source Unicode typefaces
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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. 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 can in theory cover multiple languages by including multiple glyphs per character, though very few actually cover more than one language's forms of the unified Han characters.
GNU Unifont
GNU Unifont is a bitmap-based font created by Roman Czyborra that is present in most free operating systems and windowing systems such as Linux, XFree86 or the X.Org Server. The font is released under the GNU General Public License Version 2+ with a font embedding exception.
Fixed
The Fixed X11 public-domain core bitmap fonts have provided substantial Unicode coverage since 1997.
Free UCS Outline Fonts
The Free UCS Outline Fonts [1] (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 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 May 2012.
SIL fonts
SIL International offers a large number of fonts, editors, translation and book production systems[2] 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.
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, 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.[3]
IndUni fonts
The IndUni fonts are 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, Helvetica, Times, Palatino, and New Century Schoolbook.[4]
Noto fonts
Noto is a font family designed to cover all the scripts encoded in the Unicode standard. It is designed with the goal of achieving visual harmony (e.g., compatible heights and stroke thicknesses) across multiple languages/scripts. Commissioned by Google, the font is licensed under the SIL Open Font License.[5] Until September 2015, the fonts were under the Apache License 2.0.[6]
Other
Font name | License | Version / date | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
Amiri Font | OFL | Arabic script, Naskh style | |
Bitstream Vera | Bitstream Vera fonts license | 2002 | |
Caslon Roman | OFL or BSD-like license | 2001-12-16 | |
Cardo | OFL | Unicode 6 and MUFI v3-compatible | |
DejaVu fonts | license | 2.35 (17 May 2015) | A modification and wide extension of Bitstream Vera fonts |
Diavlo font | Not open source, see EULA | Often used in web comics.[dubious – discuss] | |
Droid fonts | Apache license | A collection of fonts developed for Google's Android mobile phone operating system | |
EB Garamond | OFL | ||
Fedorovsk Unicode | GPL, OFL | Old Cyrillic script | |
Fixedsys Excelsior | public domain | 3.01 / 2007 | |
Gentium | OFL or BSD-like license | 5.000 (2014-10-28) | |
Ghostscript | GPL, AFPL, LPPL[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] | URW ++ Type 1 fonts, a free alternatives to 35 basic PostScript fonts — e.g. Type 1 version of Nimbus Roman No9 L, Nimbus Sans L, Nimbus Mono L, URW Bookman L, URW Gothic L and others | |
Hanazono Minchō[in Japanese] | (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. | |
Jomolhari | OFL | Tibetan script | |
Junicode | GPL | 0.7.8 / 30 December 2012 | |
Kelvinch Font | OFL, free for any use | Most Latin blocks fully populated + Cyrillic, Georgian, Armenian & Runes. Comes in Roman, Italic, Bold & Bold Italic. | |
Latin Modern | GUST licence | ||
Linux Libertine | GPL, OFL | 5.3.0 / July 2012 | |
Liberation fonts | GPL + font exception | 2.00.0 / July 18, 2012 | |
Liberastika fonts | GPL + font exception | Is a derivative of Liberation fonts with improved Cyrillic | |
M+ FONTS | Permissive free software licence[15] | v 060 / 2015-06-15 | |
Menaion Unicode | GPL, OFL | Old Cyrillic script and Glagolitic script | |
New Athena Unicode | OFL | ||
Old Standard TT | GPL, OFL | A Unicode font family for classical, medieval and Slavic studies — alternative download at fontspace.com | |
Ponomar Unicode | GPL, OFL | Old Cyrillic script | |
Roboto | Apache license | 2.001047; 2015 | A collection of fonts developed for Google's Android mobile phone operating system |
Ubuntu Font Family | Ubuntu Font License | Ubuntu 11.10 / 7 March 2011 | |
UniFraktur | OFL | ||
Source Sans Pro and Source Code Pro | OFL | 2012 | By Adobe |
Symbola | public domain | 8.00 / 2015 | Latest version as Symbola_hint.ttf
|
TeX Gyre collection of fonts | GUST licence | ||
Oxygen fonts | Created by the KDE community, this font is optimised for the FreeType font rendering system and works well in all graphical user interfaces, desktops and devices. Alternative download at fontsquirrel.com |
See also
References
- ^ Free UCS Outline Fonts
- ^ NRSI: Computers and Writing Systems
- ^ Details for MPH 2B Damase
- ^ IndUni fonts, by John Smith
- ^ "Noto Font". Retrieved November 24, 2015.
- ^ "Add NEWS for license change - googlei18n/noto-fonts". Retrieved 2016-04-03.
- ^ "Ghostscript SVN - URW fonts". Google Code. Google. Retrieved 2010-04-21.
- ^ "Debian package - gsfonts". packages.debian.org. Debian. Retrieved 2010-04-21.
- ^ "Fonts and font facilities supplied with Ghostscript". Ghostscript. Retrieved 2010-04-21.
- ^ URW++ making original 35 fonts available under LPPL, tug.org, retrieved 2010-05-06
- ^ Finally! Good-quality free (GPL) basic-35 PostScript Type 1 fonts., archived from the original on 2002-10-23, retrieved 2010-05-06
- ^ Finally! Good-quality free (GPL) basic-35 PostScript Type 1 fonts. (TXT), tug.org, retrieved 2010-05-06
- ^ "Fonts and TeX". 2009-12-19. Retrieved 2010-05-06.
- ^ Five years after: Report on international TEX font projects (PDF), tug.org, 2007, retrieved 2010-05-06
- ^ "License". M+ Outline Fonts. osdn.jp.
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