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$Id: README,v 1.2 2005/12/01 15:00:24 peterlin Exp $
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Summary: This project aims to privide a set of free scalable (i.e.,
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OpenType) fonts covering the ISO 10646/Unicode UCS (Universal
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WHY DO WE NEED FREE SCALABLE UCS FONTS?
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A large number of free software users switched from free X11
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bitmapped fonts to proprietary Microsoft Truetype fonts, as a) they
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used to be freely downloaded from Microsoft Typography page
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<http://www.microsoft.com/typography/free.htm>, b) they contain a more
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or less decent subsed of the ISO 10646 UCS (Universal Character Set),
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c) they are high-quality, well hinted scalable Truetype fonts, and d)
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Freetype <http://www.freetype.org/>, a free high-quality Truetype font
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renderer exists and has been integrated into the latest release of
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XFree86, the free X11 server.
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Building a dependence on non-free software, even a niche one like
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fonts, is dangerous. Microsoft Truetype core fonts are not free, they
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are just costless. For now, at least. Citing the TrueType core fonts
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for the Web FAQ <http://www.microsoft.com/typography/faq/faq8.htm>:
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"You may only redistribute the fonts in their original form (.exe or
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.sit.hqx) and with their original file name from your Web site or
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intranet site. You must not supply the fonts, or any derivative fonts
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based on them, in any form that adds value to commercial products,
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such as CD-ROM or disk based multimedia programs, application software
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or utilities." As of August 2002, however, the fonts are not
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anymore available on the Web, which makes the situation clearer.
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Aren't there any free high-quality scalable fonts? Yes, there are.
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URW++, a German digital typefoundry, released their own version of the
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35 Postscript Type 1 core fonts under GPL as their donation to the
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Ghostscript project <http://www.gimp.org/fonts.html>. The Wadalab
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Kanji comittee has produced Type 1 font files with thousands of
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filigree Japanese glyphs <ftp://ftp.ipl.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/pub/Font/>.
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Yannis Haralambous has drawn beautiful glyphs for the Omega
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typesetting system <http://omega.cse.unsw.edu.au:8080/>. And so
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on. Scattered around the internet there are numerous other free
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resources for other national scripts, many of them aiming to be a
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suitable match for Latin fonts like Times or Helvetica.
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WHAT DO WE PLAN TO ACHIEVE, AND HOW?
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Our aim is to collect available resources, fill in the missing pieces,
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and provide a set of free high-quality scalable (Opentype) UCS fonts,
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released under GNU General Public License.
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Free UCS scalable fonts will cover the following character sets
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* CEN MES-3 European Unicode Subset
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http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/cwa13873.pdf
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* IBM/Microsoft code pages 437, 850, 852, 1250, 1252 and more
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* Microsoft/Adobe Windows Glyph List 4 (WGL4)
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http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/opentype/appendices/wgl4.html
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* DEC VT100 graphics symbols
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* International Phonetic Alphabet
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* Arabic, Hebrew, Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopian, Thai and Lao alphabets,
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including Arabic presentation forms A/B
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* Japanese Katakana and Hiragana
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* mathematical symbols, including the whole TeX repertoire of symbols
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A free outline font editor, George Williams's FontForge
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<http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/> will be used for creating new
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Which font shapes should be made? As historical style terms like
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Renaissance or Baroque letterforms cannot be applied beyond
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Latin/Cyrillic/Greek scripts to any greater extent than Kufi or Nashki
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can be applied beyond Arabic script, a smaller subset of styles will
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be made: one monospaced and two proportional (one with uniform stroke
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and one with modulated) will be made at the start.
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In the beginning, however, we don't believe that Truetype hinting will
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be good enough to compete with neither the hand-crafted bitmapped
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fonts at small sizes, nor with commercial TrueType fonts. A companion
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program for modifying the TrueType font tables, TtfMod, is in the
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works, though: <http://pfaedit.sourceforge.net/TtfMod/>. For
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applications like xterm, users are referred to the existing UCS bitmap
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fonts, <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs-fonts.html>.
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Free UCS scalable fonts is free software; you can redistribute it
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and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
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published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
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License, or (at your option) any later version.
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The fonts are distributed in the hope that they will be useful, but
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WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
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MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
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General Public License for more details.
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You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
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along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
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Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA
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As a special exception, if you create a document which uses this font,
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and embed this font or unaltered portions of this font into the
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document, this font does not by itself cause the resulting document to
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be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not
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however invalidate any other reasons why the document might be covered
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by the GNU General Public License. If you modify this font, you may
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extend this exception to your version of the font, but you are not
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obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception
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statement from your version.
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WHAT DO THE FILE SUFFICES MEAN?
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The files with .sfd (Spline Font Database) are in FontForge's native
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format. Please use these if you plan to modify the font
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files. FontForge can export these to mostly any existing font file
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TrueType fonts for immediate consumption are the files with the .ttf
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(TrueType Font) suffix. You can use them directly, e.g. with the X
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The files with .ps (PostScript) suffix are not font files at all -
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they are merely PostScript files with glyph tables, which can be used
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for overview, which glyphs are contained in which font file.
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You may have noticed the lacking of PostScript Type 1 (.pfa/.pfb) font
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files. Type 1 format does not support large (> 256) encoding vectors,
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so they can not be used with ISO 10646 encoding. If your printer
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supports it, you can use Type 0 format, though. Please use FontForge
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for conversion to Type 0.
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Primoz Peterlin, <primoz.peterlin@biofiz.mf.uni-lj.si>
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Free UCS scalable fonts: http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/freefont/
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sfd/README
