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Summary: This project aims to provide a set of free scalable (i.e., 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
<http://www.microsoft.com/typography/free.htm>,
b) they contain a decent subset of the ISO 10646 UCS (Universal Character Set),
c) they are high-quality, well hinted scalable TrueType fonts, and
d) Freetype <http://www.freetype.org/>, a free, high quality TrueType font
renderer 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 <http://www.microsoft.com/typography/faq/faq8.htm>:
"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 from the Microsoft Web site, which makes the situation clearer.

Aren't there any free high-quality scalable fonts?  Yes, there are.
The Bitstream Vera fonts were made public, and are now maintained as
the DejaVu fonts family.
URW++, a German digital type foundry, released their own version of the
35 PostScript Type 1 core fonts under GPL as their donation to the
Ghostscript project <http://www.ghostscript.com>. 
The Wadalab Kanji committee has produced Type 1 font files with thousands of
filigree Japanese glyphs <http://gps.tanaka.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/wadalabfont/>.
Yannis Haralambous has drawn beautiful glyphs for the Omega typesetting
system <http://omega.enstb.org/>. 
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 (OpenType) UCS fonts,
released under GNU General Public License.

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://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/WGL4.htm
* 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 outline font editor, George Williams's FontForge
<http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/> will be used for creating new glyphs.
Rogier van Dalen's TrueType/OpenType utilities
http://home.kabelfoon.nl/~slam/fonts/
will be used for instructing TrueType fonts and compiling OpenType tables.

DESIGN ISSUES

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 - FreeMono - and two proportional (one with
uniform stroke - FreeSans - and one with modulated - FreeSerif)
will be made at the start.

These minimal style requirements allow the typefaces to preserve
the same characteristic spirit regardless of the scripts, so that the
font will be a harmonic unity. Some design notes on individual typefaces
are available.

In the beginning, however, we don't believe that TrueType hinting will
be good enough to compete with either the hand-crafted bitmapped fonts at
small sizes, or with commercial TrueType fonts.


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 2 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.


WHAT DO THE FILE SUFFIXES MEAN?

The files with .sfd (Spline Font Database) are in FontForge's native
format.  Please use these if you plan to modify the font files.
FontForge 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 lack 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 FontForge for conversion
to Type 0.


Primoz Peterlin, <primoz.peterlin@biofiz.mf.uni-lj.si>
update by Steve White <stevan.white@googlemail.com>

Free UCS scalable fonts: http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/freefont/
$Id: README,v 1.4 2008/02/11 20:06:16 Stevan_White Exp $
