GNU FreeFont
Why Unicode fonts?

Why should we put characters from lots of different writing systems into a single font at all? How good does such a font need to be? The answers to these questions lead to a policy for including character ranges into GNU FreeFont.

inclusion of character ranges

What glyphs go into a font? There are two extreme views.

One is that glyphs in a font should comprise a unified design entity.

This makes very good sense only within a single language script. Different script systems, such as Latin, Arabic and Thai, have very different typesetting traditions and conventions.

When mixing, say, French with Thai, what exactly does it mean that they should be in the same style? Does it require an artist, with deep knowledge of typesetting in all the languages involved, to achieve an ideal aesthetic harmony?

The other extreme is that a font should just have a glyph for each slot in its stated character set—never mind how well different scripts mix, and never mind aesthetics generally.

But if text from different languages is never to be mixed, one has to ask, why are the glyphs in one font? Why put characters from many languages (and technical symbols as well) into one font? Why not put them into separate files, call the fonts by separate names?

Either extreme leads to an unworkable absurdity. Somehow a balance must be struck.

It is reasonable that mixed text from a single font should look like it somehow belongs together. At the very least, glyphs from different ranges within one font should be of commensurate size and weight, and the level of decoration should be similar (e.g. serifed vs sans-serif).

The utility of having such a collection is that the user can conveniently insert special symbols, and text from varied writing scripts, without having to grope for fonts that contain the desired symbols, and without struggling to find a good stylistic match.

beauty and resources

The usefulness of a font is not independent of its beauty. A font, after all, is an artistic creation (whether a reader of text in the font is aware of it or not). But if a font is really ugly people will not find it useful.

In this project, we can expect that the contributors do not usually have the time or skills of artisans in a professional foundary. This is typical of the relationship between free and bought software. We do the best we can, and for some purposes, it is pretty good.

policy regarding inclusion of character ranges

We are lead to this policy for FreeFont: We assemble as many character ranges as we can, within our abilities, and subject to the criteria that they are: