SoundSoftware Code Site

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$Id: README,v 1.1 2002/11/28 10:10:30 peterlin Exp $

Summary: This project aims to privide a set of free scalable

(PostScript Type0, TrueType, OpenType...) fonts covering the ISO

10646/Unicode UCS (Universal Character Set).

Why do we need free scalable UCS fonts?

A large number of free software users switched from free X11

bitmapped fonts to proprietary Microsoft Truetype fonts, as a) they

used to be freely downloaded from Microsoft Typography page

<http://www.microsoft.com/typography/free.htm>, b) they contain a more

or less decent subsed of the ISO 10646 UCS (Universal Character Set),

c) they are high-quality, well hinted scalable Truetype fonts, and d)

Freetype <http://www.freetype.org/>, a free high-quality Truetype font

renderer exists and has been integrated into the latest release of

XFree86, the free X11 server.

Building a dependence on non-free software, even a niche one like

fonts, is dangerous. Microsoft Truetype core fonts are not free, they

are just costless. For now, at least. Citing the TrueType core fonts

for the Web FAQ <http://www.microsoft.com/typography/faq/faq8.htm>:

"You may only redistribute the fonts in their original form (.exe or

.sit.hqx) and with their original file name from your Web site or

intranet site. You must not supply the fonts, or any derivative fonts

based on them, in any form that adds value to commercial products,

such as CD-ROM or disk based multimedia programs, application software

or utilities." As of August 2002, however, the fonts are not

anymore available on the Web, which makes the situation clearer.

Aren't there any free high-quality scalable fonts? Yes, there are.

URW++, a German digital typefoundry, released their own version of the

35 Postscript Type 1 core fonts under GPL as their donation to the

Ghostscript project <http://www.gimp.org/fonts.html>. The Wadalab

Kanji comittee has produced Type 1 font files with thousands of

filigree Japanese glyphs <ftp:#ftp.ipl.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/pub/Font/>.

Yannis Haralambous has drawn beautiful glyphs for the Omega

typesetting system <http://omega.cse.unsw.edu.au:8080/>. And so

on. Scattered around the internet there are numerous other free

resources for other national scripts, many of them aiming to be a

suitable match for Latin fonts like Times or Helvetica.

What do we plan to achieve, and how?

Our aim is to collect available resources, fill in the missing pieces,

and provide a set of free high-quality scalable (Type 1 and Truetype)

UCS fonts, released under GPL. 

Free UCS scalable fonts will cover the following character sets

# ISO 8859 parts 1-15

# CEN MES-3 European Unicode Subset

  http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/cwa13873.pdf

# IBM/Microsoft code pages 437, 850, 852, 1250, 1252 and more

# Microsoft/Adobe Windows Glyph List 4 (WGL4)

  http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/opentype/appendices/wgl4.html

# KOI8-R and KOI8-RU

# DEC VT100 graphics symbols

# International Phonetic Alphabet

# Arabic, Hebrew, Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopian, Thai and Lao alphabets,

  including Arabic presentation forms A/B

# Japanese Katakana and Hiragana

# mathematical symbols, including the whole TeX repertoire of symbols

# APL symbols

  etc.

A free Postscript font editor, George Williams's Pfaedit

<http://pfaedit.sourceforge.net/> will be used for creating new

glyphs.

Which font shapes should be made? As historical style terms like

Renaissance or Baroque letterforms cannot be applied beyond

Latin/Cyrillic/Greek scripts to any greater extent than Kufi or Nashki

can be applied beyond Arabic script, a smaller subset of styles will

be made: one monospaced and two proportional (one with uniform stroke

and one with modulated) will be made at the start.

In the beginning, however, we don't believe that Truetype hinting will

be good enough to compete with neither the hand-crafted bitmapped

fonts at small sizes, nor with commercial TrueType fonts. A companion

program for modifying the TrueType font tables, TtfMod, is in the

works, though: <http://pfaedit.sourceforge.net/TtfMod/>. For

applications like xterm, users are referred to the existing UCS bitmap

fonts, <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs-fonts.html>.

What do the file suffices mean?

The files with .sfd (Spline Font Database) are in PfaEdit's native

format. Please use these if you plan to modify the font files. PfaEdit

can export these to mostly any existing font file format.

TrueType fonts for immediate consumption are the files with the .ttf

(TrueType Font) suffix. You can use them directly, e.g. with the X

font server.

The files with .ps (PostScript) suffix are not font files at all -

they are merely PostScript files with glyph tables, which can be used

for overview, which glyphs are contained in which font file.

You may have noticed the lacking of PostScript Type 1 (.pfa/.pfb) font

files. Type 1 format does not support large (> 256) encoding vectors,

so they can not be used with ISO 10646 encoding. If your printer

supports it, you can use Type 0 format, though. Please use PfaEdit for

conversion to Type 0.

Primoz Peterlin, <primoz.peterlin@biofiz.mf.uni-lj.si>

Free UCS scalable fonts: ftp:#biofiz.mf.uni-lj.si/pub/fonts/elbrus/