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4188f38a | 1 | -*-text-*- |
2 | GNU FreeFont | |
3 | ||
4 | The GNU FreeFont project aims to provide a useful set of free scalable | |
5 | (i.e., OpenType) fonts covering as much as possible of the ISO 10646/Unicode | |
6 | UCS (Universal Character Set). | |
7 | ||
8 | Statement of Purpose | |
9 | -------------------- | |
10 | ||
11 | The practical reason for putting glyphs together in a single font face is | |
12 | to conveniently mix symbols and characters from different writing systems, | |
13 | without having to switch fonts. | |
14 | ||
15 | Coverage | |
16 | -------- | |
17 | ||
18 | FreeFont covers the following character sets | |
19 | ||
20 | * ISO 8859 parts 1-15 | |
21 | * CEN MES-3 European Unicode Subset | |
22 | http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/cwa13873.pdf | |
23 | * IBM/Microsoft code pages 437, 850, 852, 1250, 1252 and more | |
24 | * Microsoft/Adobe Windows Glyph List 4 (WGL4) | |
25 | http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/WGL4.htm | |
26 | * KOI8-R and KOI8-RU | |
27 | * DEC VT100 graphics symbols | |
28 | * International Phonetic Alphabet | |
29 | * Arabic, Hebrew, Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopian and Thai alphabets, | |
30 | including Arabic presentation forms A/B | |
31 | * mathematical symbols, including the whole TeX repertoire of symbols | |
32 | * APL symbols | |
33 | etc. | |
34 | ||
35 | Editing | |
36 | ------- | |
37 | ||
38 | The free outline font editor, George Williams's FontForge | |
39 | <http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/> is used for editing the fonts. | |
40 | ||
41 | Design Issues | |
42 | ------------- | |
43 | ||
44 | Which font shapes should be made? Historical style terms like Renaissance | |
45 | or Baroque letterforms cannot be applied beyond Latin/Cyrillic/Greek | |
46 | scripts to any greater extent than Kufi or Nashki can be applied beyond | |
47 | Arabic script; "italic" is really only meaningful for Latin letters. | |
48 | ||
49 | However, most modern writing systems have typographic formulations for | |
50 | contrasting uniform and modulated character stroke widths, and have some | |
51 | history with "oblique", faces. Since the advent of the typewriter, most | |
52 | have developed a typographic style with uniform-width characters. | |
53 | ||
54 | Accordingly, the FreeFont family has one monospaced - FreeMono - and two | |
55 | proportional faces (one with uniform stroke - FreeSans - and one with | |
56 | modulated stroke - FreeSerif). | |
57 | ||
58 | To make text from different writing systems look good side-by-side, each | |
59 | FreeFont face is meant to contain characters of similar style and weight. | |
60 | ||
61 | Licensing | |
62 | --------- | |
63 | ||
64 | Free UCS scalable fonts is free software; you can redistribute it and/or | |
65 | modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published | |
66 | by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or | |
67 | (at your option) any later version. | |
68 | ||
69 | The fonts are distributed in the hope that they will be useful, but | |
70 | WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY | |
71 | or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License | |
72 | for more details. | |
73 | ||
74 | You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along | |
75 | with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., | |
76 | 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA. | |
77 | ||
78 | As a special exception, if you create a document which uses this font, and | |
79 | embed this font or unaltered portions of this font into the document, this | |
80 | font does not by itself cause the resulting document to be covered by the | |
81 | GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any | |
82 | other reasons why the document might be covered by the GNU General Public | |
83 | License. If you modify this font, you may extend this exception to your | |
84 | version of the font, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not | |
85 | wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version. | |
86 | ||
87 | ||
88 | Files and their suffixes | |
89 | ------------------------ | |
90 | ||
91 | The files with .sfd (Spline Font Database) are in FontForge's native format. | |
92 | Please use these if you plan to modify the font files. | |
93 | ||
94 | TrueType fonts for immediate consumption are the files with the .ttf | |
95 | (TrueType Font) suffix. These are ready to use in Xwindows based | |
96 | systems using FreeType, on Mac OS, and on older Windows systems. | |
97 | ||
98 | OpenType fonts (with suffix .otf) are for use in Windows Vista. | |
99 | Note that although they can be installed on Linux, but many applications | |
100 | in Linux still don't support them. | |
101 | ||
102 | ||
103 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
104 | Primoz Peterlin, <primoz.peterlin@biofiz.mf.uni-lj.si> | |
105 | Steve White <stevan.white@googlemail.com> | |
106 | ||
107 | Free UCS scalable fonts: http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/freefont/ | |
108 | $Id: README,v 1.6 2008/12/25 12:51:41 Stevan_White Exp $ |