forked from tohe/wmdeit_kaform
128 lines
5.0 KiB
Plaintext
128 lines
5.0 KiB
Plaintext
|
-*-text-*-
|
||
|
|
GNU FreeFont
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The GNU FreeFont project aims to provide a useful set of free scalable
|
||
|
|
(i.e., OpenType) fonts covering as much as possible of the ISO 10646/Unicode
|
||
|
|
UCS (Universal Character Set).
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Statement of Purpose
|
||
|
|
--------------------
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The practical reason for putting glyphs together in a single font face is
|
||
|
|
to conveniently mix symbols and characters from different writing systems,
|
||
|
|
without having to switch fonts.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Coverage
|
||
|
|
--------
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
FreeFont covers the following character ranges
|
||
|
|
* Latin, Cyrillic, and Arabic, with supplements for many languages
|
||
|
|
* Greek, Hebrew, Armenian, Georgian, Thaana, Syriac
|
||
|
|
* Devanagari, Bengali, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Sinhala, Tamil, Malayalam
|
||
|
|
* Thai, Tai Le, Kayah Li, Hanunóo, Buginese
|
||
|
|
* Cherokee, Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics
|
||
|
|
* Ethiopian, Tifnagh, Vai, Osmanya, Coptic
|
||
|
|
* Glagolitic, Gothic, Runic, Ugaritic, Old Persian, Phoenician, Old Italic
|
||
|
|
* Braille, International Phonetic Alphabet
|
||
|
|
* currency symbols, general punctuation and diacritical marks, dingbats
|
||
|
|
* mathematical symbols, including much of the TeX repertoire of symbols
|
||
|
|
* technical symbols: APL, OCR, arrows,
|
||
|
|
* geometrical shapes, box drawing
|
||
|
|
* musical symbols, gaming symbols, miscellaneous symbols
|
||
|
|
etc.
|
||
|
|
For more detail see <http://www.gnu.org/software/freefont/coverage.html>
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Editing
|
||
|
|
-------
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The free outline font editor, George Williams' FontForge
|
||
|
|
<http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/> is used for editing the fonts.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Design Issues
|
||
|
|
-------------
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Which font shapes should be made? 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; "italic" is strictly meaningful only for Latin letters,
|
||
|
|
although many scripts such as Cyrillic have a history with "cursive" and
|
||
|
|
many others with "oblique" faces.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
However, most modern writing systems have typographic formulations for
|
||
|
|
contrasting uniform and modulated character stroke widths, and since the
|
||
|
|
advent of the typewriter, most have developed a typographic style with
|
||
|
|
uniform-width characters.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Accordingly, the FreeFont family has one monospaced - FreeMono - and two
|
||
|
|
proportional faces (one with uniform stroke - FreeSans - and one with
|
||
|
|
modulated stroke - FreeSerif).
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The point of having characters from different writing systems in one font
|
||
|
|
is that mixed text should look good, and so each FreeFont face contains
|
||
|
|
characters of similar style and weight.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Licensing
|
||
|
|
---------
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Free UCS scalable fonts is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
|
||
|
|
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published
|
||
|
|
by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
|
||
|
|
(at your option) any later version.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The fonts are distributed in the hope that they will be useful, but
|
||
|
|
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY
|
||
|
|
or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License
|
||
|
|
for more details.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
|
||
|
|
with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
|
||
|
|
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
As a special exception, if you create a document which uses this font, and
|
||
|
|
embed this font or unaltered portions of this font into the document, this
|
||
|
|
font does not by itself cause the resulting document to be covered by the
|
||
|
|
GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any
|
||
|
|
other reasons why the document might be covered by the GNU General Public
|
||
|
|
License. If you modify this font, you may extend this exception to your
|
||
|
|
version of the font, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not
|
||
|
|
wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Files and their suffixes
|
||
|
|
------------------------
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The files with .sfd (Spline Font Database) are in FontForge's native format.
|
||
|
|
They may be used to modify the fonts.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
TrueType fonts are the files with the .ttf (TrueType Font) suffix. These
|
||
|
|
are ready to use in Linux/Unix, on Apple Mac OS, and on Microsoft Windows
|
||
|
|
systems.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
OpenType fonts (with suffix .otf) are preferred for use on Linux/Unix,
|
||
|
|
but *not* for recent Microsoft Windows systems.
|
||
|
|
See the INSTALL file for more information.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Web Open Font Format files (with suffix .woff) are for use in Web sites.
|
||
|
|
See the webfont_guidelines.txt for further information.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Further information
|
||
|
|
-------------------
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Home page of GNU FreeFont:
|
||
|
|
http://www.gnu.org/software/freefont/
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
More information is at the main project page of Free UCS scalable fonts:
|
||
|
|
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/freefont/
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
To report problems with GNU FreeFont, it is best to obtain a Savannah
|
||
|
|
account and post reports using that account on
|
||
|
|
https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Public discussions about GNU FreeFont may be posted to the mailing list
|
||
|
|
freefont-bugs@gnu.org
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
|
Original author: Primoz Peterlin
|
||
|
|
Current administrator: Steve White <stevan.white@googlemail.com>
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
$Id: README,v 1.10 2011-06-12 07:14:12 Stevan_White Exp $
|