Fonts: Difference between revisions

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To discuss the content of this page, visit [[Talk:Fonts]] (it's the link labeled ''Discussion'' above).

==Introduction==

Because the OLPC will be used in many different countries with different writing systems and scripts, it needs to have fairly broad font support. In addition, the OLPC is targetted at regions where there are currently very few computers in use. This means that existing fonts may not support the full set of glyphs required. The OLPC relies on the Unicode support in GTK+/Pango, [[Python]], and Linux in order to input, manipulate and display text. There are many Unicode fonts available but in order to be used on the OLPC, we either need an open-source font (preferable) or a license to use the font.

==Unicode Fonts==

* [http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fontsbyrange.html Alan Wood's comprehensive list of Unicode font coverage].

* [http://www.wazu.jp/ WAZU JAPAN's Gallery of Unicode Fonts]

In order to help us out, please review the fonts on these pages (and elsewhere). For fonts not on the pages linked below, list the names of the fonts, the type of license (Free/Open Source or commercial) along with a URL pointing to the open source licence or contact information for the font owner. Please, if it is a commercial font, do not just list a company name such as Microsoft or Bitstream. We need an actual contact within the commercial organization that can issue a licence.

There is extensive information on Open Source fonts at [http://www.unifont.org/fontguide/ this site]. And there is an open source text editor called [http://www.yudit.org/ Yudit] that can be used to write multiple scripts/languages including bidirectional support.

There is no problem with finding Unicode fonts for Western and Eastern Europe, [http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_CyrS.html Russian and other languages written in the Cyrillic alphabet], Greek, and Hebrew.

==Arabic Alphabet==

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Arabic.html]] Arabic and Arabic-derived, including the following:

[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_KurdishA.html Kurdish]

[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Pashto.html Pashto]

[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Persian.html Persian, Dari] Azeri, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Uzbek

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_SindhiA.html]] Sindhi and Parkari

[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Uighur.html Uighur]

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Urdu.html]] Urdu, Baluchi, Brahui, Kashmiri, Lahnda, Shahmukhi, and others

==African Fonts==

===Ethiopic===

Used to write [[Amharic]], Bilen, Oromo, Tigré, Tigrinya, and other languages. It evolved from the [[Ge'ez alphabet|script]] for classical Ge'ez, which is now strictly a liturgical language.

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Ethiopic.html]]

[http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=FontFAQ_use Abyssinica SIL] "If you wanted to distribute SIL fonts, you would need an OEM license..."

===Pan-Nigerian===

This uses the Latin-Extended ranges supported by [http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=Gentium Gentium].

==Indic Fonts==

There are ten official writing systems in [[OLPC India|India]], including Latin for English. Here are links for the other nine.

===Bengali===

Supported by Alphabetum, a commercial font which can be licensed from [http://guindo.pntic.mec.es/~jmag0042/author.html the author].

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Bengali.html]]

===Devanagari===

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Devanagari.html]] Used to write [[Sanskrit]], [[Hindi]], [[Marathi]], [[Nepalese]], and other languages.

===Gujarati===

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Gujarati.html]]

===[[Gurmukhi]]===

Gurmukhi is the alphabet used to write [[Punjabi]].

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Gurmukhi.html]]

===Kannada===

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Kannada.html]]

===Malayalam===

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Malayalam.html]]

===Oriya===

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Oriya.html]]

===Tamil===

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Tamil.html]]

===Telugu===

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Telugu.html]]

==Southeast Asian==

===Burmese (Myanmar)===

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Myanmar.html]]

===Khmer (Cambodia, Kampuchea)===

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Khmer.html]]

===Lao===

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Lao.html]]

===Sinhala (Sri Lanka)===

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Sinhala.html]]

===Tagalog (Baybayin)===

unicode block U=1700 ''Ancient script taught in Philippine school system but seldom used''

===Thai===

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Thai.html]]

===Vietnamese===

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Vietnamese.html]]

==Central Asian==

===Tibetan===

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Tibetan.html]]

Supported by Tibetan Machine Uni which is [http://www.thdl.org/xml/show.php?xml=/tools/tibfonts.xml&l=uva10928423419921 available under the GNU General Public License]. The Tibetan script and language is a particulary complex one. [http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/5/01839/12103 This article] gives some background and guides you step by step through writing the word ''drup'' which is not nearly as simple as it seems.

:More resources for the Tibetan script; [http://www.thdl.org/xml/showEssay.php?xml=/tools/getstartuni.xml&m=print Getting Started with Unicode Tibetan], [http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-announce-list/2004-December/msg00037.html Tibetan support in Pango] has been available since Dec. 2004. If you use GTK+ 2.0 applications, Tibetan should work with the appropriate fonts. [[User:Simosx]] 11:10, 18 June 2006 (EDT)

===Mongolian===

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Mongolian.html]]

==Liturgical Scripts==

In the cultures which use special liturgical scripts, religious instruction is an important part of the child's education. To fully support this, beyond the use of scanned books compressed into [[DJVU]] format, the OLPC would need to contain fonts for the appropriate liturgical scripts.

===[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Coptic.html Coptic]===

The Coptic script is used by Ethopia's Coptic Christians.

===[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Syriac.html Syriac]===

The Syriac script is used to write the Aramaic language used in the Syriac Orthodox Christian Church, Chaldean Catholic Church, and the Assyrian Church of the East. Native speakers number between four hundred thousand and two million throughout the world. The members of the above churches can be found predominantly in the Middle East particularly in Iraq, Syria. Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon while others can be found in the diaspora.

You can find high quality, professionally developed Syriac fonts at the [http://www.bethmardutho.org Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute] and are under the [http://www.xfree86.org/current/LICENSE11.html Bigelow & Holmes Inc and URW++ GmbH Luxi font license].

These fonts are called the [http://www.bethmardutho.org/meltho/ Meltho OpenType™ Syriac Fonts].

===[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_CyrOCS.html Old Church Slavonic]===

This script is commonly used in the Russian Orthodox church and related Orthodox churches to write the Old Church Slavonic language. Church services are spoken/sung in this language and many people read the bible in this language. Due to the fact that the Russian language has been heavily influenced by Old Church Slavonic over the centuries, most children are able to learn the language in religious studies classes without language-specific instruction.

==Other Writing Systems==

===Armenian===

[http://fonts.tarumian.am/ArialAMU.zip Arial AMU] - Free for non-commercial use.

[http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_Armenian.html Armenian Fonts]

===Georgian===

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Georgian.html]]

===Thaana===

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Thaana.html]]

===Cherokee===

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Cherokee.html]]

===Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics===

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Canadian.html]]

===Braille Patterns===

[[http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_Braille.html]]

== Scripts in Pilot Countries ==

The OLPC will be initially distributed to about half a dozen countries as part of a [http://www.laptop.org/map.en_US.html Pilot program]. In this section we list the generic language/script requirements for this list of countries. See [http://www.ethnologue.org/ Ethnologue]'s country lists for details.

[[OLPC_Rwanda|Rwanda]]

*Latin (English, French, Kinyarwanda)

[[OLPC_Argentina|Argentina]]

*Latin (Spanish)

[[OLPC_Uruguay|Uruguay]]

*Latin (Spanish)

[[OLPC_Libya|Libya]]

*[[Arabic]]

[[OLPC_Brazil|Brazil]]

*Latin (Portuguese)

[[OLPC_Nigeria|Nigeria]]

*Pan-Nigerian [[Pan-Nigerian|(latin with extensions)]] for Yoruba and Igbo, at least

*[[Hausa]] Arabic

[[OLPC_Thailand|Thailand]] ''(may no longer be a pilot country)''

*Thai [[Thai script]](คอลัมน์ประจำวัน)

*Burmese for the refugee camps

*Several minority languages such as Tai Le

<!-- not a pilot country

[[OLPC_China|China]]

*Mongolian

*Simplified chinese [[Simplified Chinese]](简体字)

*Tibetan [[Tibetan script]](བོད་ཡིག)

*Traditional Chinese [[Traditional Chinese]](繁体字/正体字)

*Uyghur:(شىنجاڭ ئۇيغۇر ئاپتونوم رايونى)

Dozens of other languages

-->

<!-- not a pilot country

[[OLPC_India|India]]

*Bengali [[Bengali]](বাংলা লিপি)

*Devanagari [[Devanagari]](देवनागरी) for Hindi, Marathi, and other languages

*Gujarati [[Gujarati]](ગુજરાતી(

*Gurmukhi [[Gurmukhi]](ਗੁਰਮੁਖੀ)

*Kannada [[Kannada]](ಕನ್ನಡ)

*Limbu [[Limbu]]

*Malayalam [[Malayalam]](മലയാളം)

*Oriya [[Oriya]]

*Sinhala [[Sinhala]]

*Syloti Nagri [[Syloti Nagri]]

*Tamil [[Tamil]](தமிழ்)

*Telugu [[Telugu]]

Dozens of other languages

-->

==General list of Scripts==

List of Scripts can be found at unicode website [[http://www.unicode.org/charts/]] most of them are not available in the Projects listed below.

Table of scripts, languages, countries [[http://www.unicode.org/onlinedat/languages-scripts.html]]

:A year ago, that was true. Now, nearly all of the essential scripts (writing systems used for official national languages) are supported with Free fonts, [[keyboard layouts]] or [[Input methods|IMEs]], and rendering. The native [[Mongolian]] alphabet is the principal exception. The writing systems listed at the site mentioned above for which we do not have adequate support in Linux are:

* Batak

* Buginese

* Buhid

* Chakma

* Cham

* Cherokee

* Deseret

* Shavian

* Hanunoo

* Hmong (not in use - Hmong ist mostly written with Latin Alphabeth)

* Javanese

* Lepcha

* Lisu

* Meetai Mayek

* Naxi

* Ranjana

* Parachalit

* Samaritan

* Ol Semet

* Syloti Nagri

* Tagbanwa

* Tifinagh

* Chu Nom

* Yi.

Some are entirely obsolete, the entire community of speakers having switched to some other writing system (Chu Nom to Latin, in the case of Vietnamese, and so on). Deseret and Shavian are historical relics that never came into actual use. The rest are for minority languages, where the language communities are relatively small and generally bilingual or trilingual.

:I would never argue that we shouldn't support these languages and writing systems. But the situation is nowhere near as bad as suggested. I count 30 supported writing systems, encoded in Unicode, with fonts and keyboards/IMEs. (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, Thaana, the nine Indic writing systems, Sinhala, Burmese, Thai, Khmer, Lao, Tibetan, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, Syriac, Zhuyin)

:These cover every official language of every country, except for the use of Mongol script in China, which [http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=341729 Soyombo] is working on. The list of scripts not fully supported looks nearly as large. I counted 24 above. But only a few of them have significant populations who cannot be reached in other, supported, languages. Most are in Unicode, and have fonts available. Keyboard layouts for most of these languages exist, but have to be put into the xkb format for use with Linux. Some of us are working on that. --[[User:Mokurai|Mokurai]] 22:40, 3 November 2006 (EST)

== Font Projects ==

It is not clear yet whether the OLPC will be using [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fontconfig fontconfig] to manage the fonts. In case it does, then, for Latin/Greek/Cyrillic-based languages there might be a need for a triplet of font faces: sans, serif and monospace. For other scripts, these three faces do not apply, therefore only one font is required.

The current main font used in most Linux distributions (Fedora, Ubuntu, SuSE, Debian, etc) is [http://www.gnome.org/fonts/ Bitstream Vera]. Bitstream Vera supports Basic Latin/Latin-1 and a small proportion of [http://www.unicode.org/charts/ Latin Extended].

The lack of coverage of Latin Extended, Greek, Cyrillic created [http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Bitstream_Vera_derivatives several derivative font projects].

One of those derivatives is [http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/ DejaVu], which at [http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/News version 2.6] supports Basic Latin/Latin-1/Latin Extended/Cyrillic/Greek/Greek Polytonic and other Unicode ranges. [http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/ DejaVu] also supports Unicode symbols ([http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2700.pdf dingbats (PDF)], [http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2190.pdf arrows (PDF)], etc) which may make it more appealing to kids as they can easily add them to their documents.

DejaVu is also the default font in [http://www.ubuntu.com/ Ubuntu 6.06] which was released on 1st June 2006. It is one of the first distributions that has good font support by default for Latin, Cyrillic and Greek at the same time.

See [http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/PDF_samples PDF samples] of the DejaVu fonts.

=== Open fonts catalogs ===

To find more quality free/libre/open smart fonts with wide Unicode coverage see [http://scripts.sil.org/OFL_fonts Fonts under the Open Font License] and [http://unifont.org/fontguide/ Unicode Font Guide For Free/Libre Open Source Operating Systems].

=Debian Linux fonts=

The following Free non-Latin TrueType/Opentype font packages are included in Debian Linux Testing as of November 2006. There are many other kinds of fonts available with Linux, including bitmap console font packages, bitmap X font packages (xfonts-*), PostScript/GhostScript fonts, TeX fonts, and others.

{|border="1"

! Package !! Description !! Fonts

|-

|ttf-alee

|free Hangul truetype fonts made by A Lee.

|Bandal, Bangwool, Guseul, Eunjin, and EunjinNakseo

|-

|ttf-arabeyes

|Arabeyes GPL TrueType Arabic fonts

|39 fonts

|-

|ttf-Arhangai

|Sans Serif font that supports the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet

|Arhangai

|-

|ttf-arphic-bkai00mp