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Ubuntu is an
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. OpenType is a registered trademark ...
-based font family, designed to be a modern, humanist-style typeface by London-based
type foundry A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Before digital typography, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces for hand typesetting, and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and M ...
Dalton Maag Dalton Maag is an independent font foundry with offices in London, UK, and São Paulo, Brazil. It designs fonts for use in corporate identities, logos, and other text uses. Dalton Maag has a library of 30 retail fonts as of 2016 and offers custo ...
, with funding by
Canonical Ltd Canonical Ltd. is a UK-based privately held computer software company founded and funded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth to market commercial support and related services for Ubuntu and related projects. Canonical employs staff ...
. The font was under development for nearly nine months, with only a limited initial release through a beta program, until September 2010. It was then that it became the new default font of the Ubuntu operating system in Ubuntu 10.10. Its designers include
Vincent Connare Vincent Connare (born September 26, 1960) is an American type designer and former Microsoft employee. Among his creations are the fonts Comic Sans and Trebuchet MS, as well as the Man in Business Suit Levitating emoji. Besides text typefaces, ...
, creator of the
Comic Sans Comic Sans MS is a sans-serif typeface designed by Vincent Connare and released in 1994 by Microsoft Corporation. It is a non-connecting script inspired by comic book lettering, intended for use in cartoon speech bubbles, as well as in other cas ...
and
Trebuchet MS Trebuchet MS is a humanist sans-serif typeface that Vincent Connare designed for Microsoft Corporation in 1996. Trebuchet MS was the font used for the window titles in the Windows XP default theme, succeeding MS Sans Serif and Tahoma. Release ...
fonts. The Ubuntu font family is licensed under the Ubuntu Font Licence.


History and features

The font was first introduced in October 2010 with the release of Ubuntu 10.10 in four versions Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic in English. With the release of Ubuntu 11.04 in April 2011, additional fonts and expanded language coverage were introduced.Ubuntu Font Family
/ref> The final development is intended to include a total of thirteen fonts consisting of: * Ubuntu in Regular, Italic,
Bold In typography, emphasis is the strengthening of words in a text with a font in a different style from the rest of the text, to highlight them. It is the equivalent of prosody stress in speech. Methods and use The most common methods in W ...
and Bold Italic * Ubuntu Monospace in Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic * Ubuntu Light in Regular, Italic * Ubuntu Medium in Regular, Italic * Ubuntu Condensed in Regular only The monospace version, used in terminals, was initially planned to ship with Ubuntu 11.04. However, it was delayed and instead shipped with Ubuntu 11.10 as the default system monospace font. The font is fully
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
compliant and contains Latin A and B extended character sets, Greek polytonic, and Cyrillic extended. In addition, it has become the first native operating system font to include the
Indian rupee sign The Indian rupee sign (₹) is the currency symbol for the Indian rupee (ISO 4217: INR), the official currency of India. Designed by D. Udaya Kumar, it was presented to the public by the Government of India on 15 July 2010, following its select ...
. The font has been designed primarily for use on screen displays, and its spacing and kerning is optimised for body copy sizes.


Usage

The Ubuntu Font Family is the default font for the current and development releases of the Ubuntu operating system and is used for the Ubuntu project branding. The Ubuntu Font Family has been included in the Google Fonts directory, making it easily available for
web typography Web typography is the use of fonts on the World Wide Web. When HTML was first created, font faces and styles were controlled exclusively by the settings of each web browser. There was no mechanism for individual Web pages to control font display ...
, and as of April 26, 2011 it is included for use in
Google Docs Google Docs is an online word processor included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google, which also includes: Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google Forms, Google Sites and Google Keep. Go ...
. Ubuntu Monospace was prominently used in the 2014 video game ''Transistor''. Ubuntu bold-italic is also used in the
bitcoin Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...
logotype, alongside the bitcoin symbol.


Ubuntu Font Licence

The Ubuntu Font Licence is an "interim" license designed for the Ubuntu Font Family, which has used the license since version 0.68. The license is based on the
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 Internationa ...
. The Ubuntu Font Licence allows the fonts to be "used, studied, modified and redistributed freely" given that the license terms are met. The license is
copyleft Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose ...
and all derivative works must be distributed under the same license. Documents that use the fonts are not required to be licensed under the Ubuntu Font Licence.
Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both side ...
and
Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...
have reviewed this license and converged on interpreting it as non-free due to incomplete or ambiguous use and modification permissions.


See also

*
FF Dax FF Dax is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Hans Reichel, published by FontFont library. The typeface is popular in advertising and in marketing. It is a "spurless" sans-serif, similar to typefaces like Semplicità and some characters in ...
, a similar spurless sans-serif font * Ubuntu Titling font *
Open-source Unicode typefaces There are Unicode typefaces which are open-source and designed to contain glyphs of all Unicode 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 A ...
*
GPL font exception The GPL font exception clause (or GPL+FE, for short) is an optional clause that can be added to the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) permitting digital fonts shared with that license to be embedded within a digital document file without requ ...
*
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 Internationa ...


References


External links


Ubuntu Font Family main page

Ubuntu Font Family on the Ubuntu Wiki
{{Monospaced fonts Humanist sans-serif typefaces Unicode typefaces Corporate typefaces Open-source typefaces Ubuntu Typefaces and fonts introduced in 2010 Dalton Maag typefaces