-*-text-*- $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 , 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 , 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 : "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 . The Wadalab Kanji comittee has produced Type 1 font files with thousands of filigree Japanese glyphs . Yannis Haralambous has drawn beautiful glyphs for the Omega typesetting system . 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 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: . For applications like xterm, users are referred to the existing UCS bitmap fonts, . 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, Free UCS scalable fonts: ftp:#biofiz.mf.uni-lj.si/pub/fonts/elbrus/