There are

Unicode typefaces A Unicode font is a computer font that maps glyphs to code points defined in the Unicode Standard. The vast majority of modern computer fonts use Unicode mappings, even those fonts which only include glyphs for a single writing system, or even only ...

which are

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

and designed to contain

glyph A glyph ( ) is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A ...

s of all

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

characters, or at least a broad selection of Unicode scripts. 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 In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a ''typeface'', defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design. For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) includes fonts " Roman" (or "regul ...

was that certain Unicode characters should be rendered differently depending on which language they are used in, and that a font that only includes the characters a certain user needs will be much smaller in file size compared to one with many glyphs. Unicode fonts in modern formats such as

OpenType OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. Derived from TrueType, it retains TrueType's basic structure but adds many intricate data structures for describing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corpora ...

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.

History

20th century

Fixed

The

Fixed Fixed may refer to: * ''Fixed'' (EP), EP by Nine Inch Nails * ''Fixed'' (film), an upcoming animated film directed by Genndy Tartakovsky * Fixed (typeface), a collection of monospace bitmap fonts that is distributed with the X Window System * Fi ...

X11 public-domain core bitmap fonts have provided substantial Unicode coverage since 1997.

GNU Unifont

GNU Unifont GNU Unifont is a free Unicode bitmap font created by Roman Czyborra. The main Unifont covers all of the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP). The "upper" companion covers significant parts of the Supplementary Multilingual Plane (SMP). The "Unifont J ...

is a

bitmap In computing, a bitmap (also called raster) graphic is an image formed from rows of different colored pixels. A GIF is an example of a graphics image file that uses a bitmap. As a noun, the term "bitmap" is very often used to refer to a partic ...

-based font created by Roman Czyborra that is present in most free

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s and windowing systems such as

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

XFree86 XFree86 is an implementation of the X Window System. It was originally written for Unix-like operating systems on IBM PC compatibles and was available for many other operating systems and platforms. It is free software, free and Open-source softw ...

or the X.Org Server. The font is released under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

Version 2+ with a font embedding exception.

21st century

2000s

=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

. It also supports several font formats, including

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language and dynamically typed, stack-based programming language. It is most commonly used in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm, but as a Turing complete programming language, it c ...

TrueType TrueType is an Computer font#Outline fonts, outline font standardization, standard developed by Apple Inc., Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe Inc., Adobe's PostScript fonts#Type 1, Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the ...

, and

. For this reason the fonts are derived from original work made in

FontForge FontForge is a FOSS font editor which supports many common font formats. Developed primarily by George Williams until 2012, FontForge is free software and is distributed under a mix of the GNU General Public License Version 3 and the 3-clause ...

, and stored in .sfd (Spline Font Database) files. The most recent release is from May 2012.

=SIL fonts

SIL International SIL Global (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics International) is an evangelical Christian nonprofit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, to expan ...

offers a large number of fonts, editors, translation and book production systems as part of their goal to bridge the

digital divide The digital divide is the unequal access to information technology, digital technology, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and the internet. The digital divide worsens inequality around access to information and resources. In 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 The SIL Open Font License (or OFL in short) is one of the major open font licenses, which allows embedding, or "bundling", of the font in commercially sold products. OFL is a free and open source license. It was created by SIL Global, the ...

. Typefaces include

Charis SIL Charis SIL or Charis () is a slab serif typeface developed by SIL International based on Bitstream Charter, one of the first fonts designed for laser printers. The font offers four family members: roman, bold, italic, and bold italic. Its design ...

, Doulos SIL, Gentium and Andika.

=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 In the Unicode standard, a plane is a contiguous group of 65,536 (216) code points. There are 17 planes, identified by the numbers 0 to 16, which corresponds with the possible values 00–1016 of the first two positions in six position hexadecimal ...

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian diaspora, Armenian communities around the ...

, Cherokee, Coptic,

Cypriot Syllabary The Cypriot or Cypriote syllabary (also Classical Cypriot Syllabary) is a syllabary, syllabic script used in Iron Age Cyprus, from about the 11th to the 4th centuries BCE, when it was replaced by the Greek alphabet. It has been suggested that t ...

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

, Deseret, Georgian,

Glagolitic The Glagolitic script ( , , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed that it was created in the 9th century for the purpose of translating liturgical texts into Old Church Slavonic by Saints Cyril and Methodi ...

, Gothic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Limbu,

Linear B Linear B is a syllabary, syllabic script that was used for writing in Mycenaean Greek, the earliest Attested language, attested form of the Greek language. The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries, the earliest known examp ...

(partial coverage), Old Italic,

Old Persian cuneiform Old Persian cuneiform is a semi-alphabetic cuneiform, cuneiform script that was the primary script for Old Persian. Texts written in this cuneiform have been found in Iran (Persepolis, Susa, Hamadan, Kharg Island), Armenia, Romania (Gherla), Turk ...

Osmanya Osmanya (, ), known in Somali as ''Far Soomaali'' (, "Somali writing") and in Arabic as ''al-kitābah al-ʿuthmānīyah'' (; "Osman writing"), is an alphabetic script created to transcribe the Somali language. It was invented by Osman Yusuf Ke ...

, Phoenician, Shavian,

Syloti Nagri Sylheti Nagri or Sylheti Nāgarī (, , ), known in classical manuscripts as Sylhet Nagri () as well as by #Etymology and names, many other names, is an Indic script. The script was historically used in the regions of Bengal and Assam, that were ...

(no conjuncts), Tai Le (no combining tone marks),

Thaana Thaana, Tãna, Taana or Tāna ( ) is the present writing system of the Maldivian language spoken in the Maldives. Thaana has characteristics of both an abugida (diacritics, vowel-killer strokes) and a true alphabet (all vowels are w ...

, Tifinagh,

Ugaritic Ugaritic () is an extinct Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeology, archaeologists in 1928 at Ugarit, including several major literary texts, notably the Baal cycl ...

, and Vietnamese.

=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 easy. They are based on fonts designed by URW++ Design and Development Incorporated, and offer lookalikes for

Courier A courier is a person or organization that delivers a message, package or letter from one place or person to another place or person. Typically, a courier provides their courier service on a commercial contract basis; however, some couriers are ...

Helvetica Helvetica, also known by its original name Neue Haas Grotesk, is a widely-used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the f ...

, Times, Palatino, and New Century Schoolbook.

2010s

= Noto fonts

= Noto is a font family designed to cover all the scripts encoded in the

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 Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

, the font is licensed under the

. Until September 2015, the fonts were under the Apache License 2.0.

= Cascadia Code

= Cascadia Code is a purpose-built

font for

Windows Terminal Windows Terminal is a Tabbed, multi-tabbed terminal emulator developed by Microsoft for Windows 10 and later as a replacement for Windows Console. It can run any command-line app in a separate tab. It is preconfigured to run Windows Command Pro ...

, the new command-line interface for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. It includes programming ligatures and was designed to enhance the look and feel of Windows Terminal, terminal applications and text editors such as

Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed by Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including web site, websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development ...

and

Visual Studio Code Visual Studio Code, commonly referred to as VS Code, is an integrated development environment developed by Microsoft for Windows, Linux, macOS and web browsers. Features include support for debugging, syntax highlighting, intelligent code comp ...

. The font is

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

under the

and available on

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

. It has been bundled with Windows Terminal since version 0.5.2762.0.

2020s

=Kurinto Font Folio

= Kurinto is a large collection of Pan-Unicode, OFL-licensed

fonts. The intended use-case is academic publishing, especially when authoring in

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor program, word processing program developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platf ...

and publishing to

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

. The primary goal is to address issues when mixing languages using

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

with secondary languages using other scripts. Most of the italic faces are not true italics; they are slanted versions of the corresponding regular ones (

oblique type Oblique type is a form of type that slants slightly to the right, used for the same purposes as italic type. Unlike italic type, however, it does not use different glyph shapes; it uses the same glyphs as roman type, except slanted. Oblique and i ...

s). However, those of the included "Metric-Compatible Typeface" serifs are (having round

letterforms A letterform, letter-form or letter form is a term used especially in typography, palaeography, calligraphy and epigraphy to mean a letter's shape. A letterform is a type of glyph, which is a specific, concrete way of writing an abstract charac ...

, a Florin sign ƒ, etc).

=Larabie Fonts

= In August 2020, Ray Larabie released a library of early fonts from the 1990s, prior to the establishment of his professional digital type firm Typodermic Fonts, into the public domain. Most of the fonts that were released were "experimental, interesting, or simply lousy" and were no longer of any commercial value. Larabie released another batch of fonts into the public domain in November 2022, and another—which included fonts from Typodermic and fonts he considered "good" but did not perform well in sales or downloads—in April 2024.Larabie, Raymond (August 10, 2020).
Between the Lines: The Hidden Stories of Typodermic Fonts
'. Retrieved August 21, 2024. (Larabie retained copyright on other fonts from the Larabie Fonts that he continues to license and sell through Typodermic, and has withheld others that turned out to be

derivative work In copyright law, a derivative work is an expressive creation that includes major copyrightable elements of a first, previously created original work (the underlying work). The derivative work becomes a second, separate work independent from ...

s of copyrighted material.) The fonts vary widely in their Unicode coverage. Larabie had previously released the pan-Unicode "Canada 150" into the public domain as a gesture to the Canadian sesquicentennial in 2017.

Comparison

References

External links

Google Font DirectoryUnicode 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
for UNIX systems

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
{{Free and open-source typography Lists of typefaces