iBet uBet web content aggregator. Adding the entire web to your favor.

Link to original content: https://typosetting.co.uk/

An Exploration of libre TTF and OTF fonts

If revisiting, quick links to The table of fonts and Changelog

Introduction

I am not a typographer, but I've long had an interest in getting good-looking desktop
fonts on my Linux desktops, with coverage of everything I'm likely to look at - that
nowadays mostly includes text in variants of the Latin alphabet, with some pages in
Cyrillic alphabets and occasional Greek pages. It also covers fonts, preferably
monospaced, for posts on mailing lists. Those posts often include some CJK glyphs.

Despite how many of my posts have included odd misspellings, I usually do know
how to spell - but my typing is often poor, with lots of typos (and I find them very
hard to spot), so I have called this domain typosetting.

A history of how this has evolved, including my use of TeXLive, and my current
thoughts on how I try to style the files showing coverage of languages, is at
History of my explorations

The (consolidated) table of fonts is at The table of fonts

I first started this exercise in about 2011. I have now revised some of the fonts and
corrected various errors in my presentation, but that is an ongoing process. I am
reluctant to revisit those fonts for non-Latin/Cyrillic/Greek languages so those old
documents are likely to contain typos and may lack capitalisation of proper nouns.
However, I hope to eventually get all CJK fonts revised.

My aim is to provide details of libre fonts, using PDFs to show the glyphs in each font
and to give examples of languages I think the font supports. Where a font provides
small capitals I attempt to show those for the languages I use in the examples, and to
note any problems with them. AFAICS, unless they are in a separate file it is not possible
to use small caps except from LuaLaTeX or XeLaTeX (libreoffice might simulate them).
Therefore I ignore them in monospace fonts except for the separate caps font of
Latin Modern Mono.

I only look at pre-built fonts: fonts offered as sources use various different tools. When
last I looked at Cantarell from Gnome (it appears to be a fork of the original font but
retaining the same name) it was only available as source. I have now looked at version
0.303 which contains a prebuilt font, but that is a variable font and I have no means of
discovering what it contains, nor of using it in XeLaTeX.

I also offer my XeLaTeX source files from which I created the languages PDFs in the
hope that they might occasionally be instructive for other XeLaTeX users.

Links within this site

Changelog

Errata

Files of dummy text to compare fonts: The PDF-lipsum directory has various PDFs
trying to compare the output from different fonts. Much of the output is very old,
I was in the process of updating fonts covering Latin alphabets but got diverted to
preparing this new website and revising the details.

XeLaTeX files I used to create lipsum PDFs: Some are from before 2024 and have
the same issues as my other old XeLaTeX files, other very old lipsum files were
created in LibreOffice.

Files for comparing CJK fonts : The CJK languages do not generally use dummy text
in the same way as European languages. Although XeLaTeX has various packages
which use real text, those only provide a limited view of the many available glyphs.
I am adding files to help compare codepoints which might differ in CJK fonts, so far
only for 'CN' (Simplified Chinese), JP (Japanese) and TW (Traditional Chinese as used
in Taiwan ad elsewhere.

Over the last year I have read far too much about experiments which could not be
replicated. So, for anyone who wants to access the files I used, including those who
merely wish to gain an overview of how I address certain issues in using some of the
fonts (typically, related to XeLaTeX or polyglossia), I am putting source files for my
tools to determine what is in a font (usage is summarised in My current process),
my templates to start identifying which languages a font supports, and the source I
have for how I created the lipsum and substitutes files are all linked from
Links to my tools and source.

My download links

Notes about my languages files
In particular some comments about which languages I show, and why.

Substitute fonts for the main Latin fonts: In the beginning, websites often preferred a
specific font such as Helvetica or Times New Roman. Some files from fontconfig have
rules to choose various alternatives. Examples are in that link and now updated for
fonts available in 2024. There are also substitutes for MS Calibri and Cambria which
might be expected to be used for school work.

You might need to tune fontconfig to pick up the alternative you prefer, see BLFS and look
at the "Current Development" links (at the moment, the Sysv book is listed first, with a
separate entry for the Systemd book further down the page). Choose one of those books
and look for the Tuning Fontconfig page (should be the same in both books), currently
near the end of chapter 24 Graphical Environments.

The table of fonts

Changelog

Index of fonts by Fontconfig name

Index of fonts by my Identifier

Most of the columns are, I hope, self-explanatory.
The 'Revised' column links to my XeLaTeX source file and shows when I revised the
'languages' PDF, It also links to my small caps sc.tex files where those exist.
(Many files revised before 2024 exaggerate which codepoints or languages are available.)
The 'Languages' links are to PDFs showing which of my example languages are supported,
and also to files of SC (Small Caps) support where the font has those.
The Bold column indicates that at least one darker weight also exists.
The Italic column indicates an Italic or a Slant style exists.
The Package column provides links to where to download a (perhaps later) version of the
font: Many fonts lack version numbers: for those I note the fontfile date or commit date.
Codepoints links to plain text files of what is in the font.
Coverage reports the codepoints within their Unicode blocks.

This table is very wide, you can scroll across but ideally use a wider window.
The identification numbers are repeated at the end of each line.

Ken Moffat, 2016-2024. E&OE