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   1  -*-text-*-
   2  $Id: README,v 1.1 2002/11/28 10:10:30 peterlin Exp $
   3  
   4  Summary: This project aims to privide a set of free scalable
   5  (PostScript Type0, TrueType, OpenType...) fonts covering the ISO
   6  10646/Unicode UCS (Universal Character Set).
   7  
   8  
   9  Why do we need free scalable UCS fonts?
  10  
  11  A large number of free software users switched from free X11
  12  bitmapped fonts to proprietary Microsoft Truetype fonts, as a) they
  13  used to be freely downloaded from Microsoft Typography page
  14  <http://www.microsoft.com/typography/free.htm>, b) they contain a more
  15  or less decent subsed of the ISO 10646 UCS (Universal Character Set),
  16  c) they are high-quality, well hinted scalable Truetype fonts, and d)
  17  Freetype <http://www.freetype.org/>, a free high-quality Truetype font
  18  renderer exists and has been integrated into the latest release of
  19  XFree86, the free X11 server.
  20  
  21  Building a dependence on non-free software, even a niche one like
  22  fonts, is dangerous. Microsoft Truetype core fonts are not free, they
  23  are just costless. For now, at least. Citing the TrueType core fonts
  24  for the Web FAQ <http://www.microsoft.com/typography/faq/faq8.htm>:
  25  "You may only redistribute the fonts in their original form (.exe or
  26  .sit.hqx) and with their original file name from your Web site or
  27  intranet site. You must not supply the fonts, or any derivative fonts
  28  based on them, in any form that adds value to commercial products,
  29  such as CD-ROM or disk based multimedia programs, application software
  30  or utilities." As of August 2002, however, the fonts are not
  31  anymore available on the Web, which makes the situation clearer.
  32  
  33  Aren't there any free high-quality scalable fonts? Yes, there are.
  34  URW++, a German digital typefoundry, released their own version of the
  35  35 Postscript Type 1 core fonts under GPL as their donation to the
  36  Ghostscript project <http://www.gimp.org/fonts.html>. The Wadalab
  37  Kanji comittee has produced Type 1 font files with thousands of
  38  filigree Japanese glyphs <ftp://ftp.ipl.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/pub/Font/>.
  39  Yannis Haralambous has drawn beautiful glyphs for the Omega
  40  typesetting system <http://omega.cse.unsw.edu.au:8080/>. And so
  41  on. Scattered around the internet there are numerous other free
  42  resources for other national scripts, many of them aiming to be a
  43  suitable match for Latin fonts like Times or Helvetica.
  44  
  45  
  46  What do we plan to achieve, and how?
  47  
  48  Our aim is to collect available resources, fill in the missing pieces,
  49  and provide a set of free high-quality scalable (Type 1 and Truetype)
  50  UCS fonts, released under GPL. 
  51  
  52  Free UCS scalable fonts will cover the following character sets
  53  
  54  * ISO 8859 parts 1-15
  55  * CEN MES-3 European Unicode Subset
  56    http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/cwa13873.pdf
  57  * IBM/Microsoft code pages 437, 850, 852, 1250, 1252 and more
  58  * Microsoft/Adobe Windows Glyph List 4 (WGL4)
  59    http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/opentype/appendices/wgl4.html
  60  * KOI8-R and KOI8-RU
  61  * DEC VT100 graphics symbols
  62  * International Phonetic Alphabet
  63  * Arabic, Hebrew, Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopian, Thai and Lao alphabets,
  64    including Arabic presentation forms A/B
  65  * Japanese Katakana and Hiragana
  66  * mathematical symbols, including the whole TeX repertoire of symbols
  67  * APL symbols
  68    etc.
  69  
  70  A free Postscript font editor, George Williams's Pfaedit
  71  <http://pfaedit.sourceforge.net/> will be used for creating new
  72  glyphs.
  73  
  74  Which font shapes should be made? As historical style terms like
  75  Renaissance or Baroque letterforms cannot be applied beyond
  76  Latin/Cyrillic/Greek scripts to any greater extent than Kufi or Nashki
  77  can be applied beyond Arabic script, a smaller subset of styles will
  78  be made: one monospaced and two proportional (one with uniform stroke
  79  and one with modulated) will be made at the start.
  80  
  81  In the beginning, however, we don't believe that Truetype hinting will
  82  be good enough to compete with neither the hand-crafted bitmapped
  83  fonts at small sizes, nor with commercial TrueType fonts. A companion
  84  program for modifying the TrueType font tables, TtfMod, is in the
  85  works, though: <http://pfaedit.sourceforge.net/TtfMod/>. For
  86  applications like xterm, users are referred to the existing UCS bitmap
  87  fonts, <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs-fonts.html>.
  88  
  89  
  90  What do the file suffices mean?
  91  
  92  The files with .sfd (Spline Font Database) are in PfaEdit's native
  93  format. Please use these if you plan to modify the font files. PfaEdit
  94  can export these to mostly any existing font file format.
  95  
  96  TrueType fonts for immediate consumption are the files with the .ttf
  97  (TrueType Font) suffix. You can use them directly, e.g. with the X
  98  font server.
  99  
 100  The files with .ps (PostScript) suffix are not font files at all -
 101  they are merely PostScript files with glyph tables, which can be used
 102  for overview, which glyphs are contained in which font file.
 103  
 104  You may have noticed the lacking of PostScript Type 1 (.pfa/.pfb) font
 105  files. Type 1 format does not support large (> 256) encoding vectors,
 106  so they can not be used with ISO 10646 encoding. If your printer
 107  supports it, you can use Type 0 format, though. Please use PfaEdit for
 108  conversion to Type 0.
 109  
 110  
 111  Primoz Peterlin, <[email protected]>
 112  
 113  Free UCS scalable fonts: ftp://biofiz.mf.uni-lj.si/pub/fonts/elbrus/