Ubuntu Font Family
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== Howto == As of 2010-08-20 the font is still in a ''phased beta'', if you have are a member of the many Launchpad groups with access (eg. {{{ubuntu-members}}}), you should be able to: 1. Visit http://launchpad.net/people/+me/+archivesubscriptions 1. Click '''View''' next to {{{ubuntu-font-beta-testing}}} 1. Add the personalised archive details to your machine's {{{/etc/apt/sources.list}}} 1. {{{sudo apt-get update}}} 1. {{{sudo apt-get install ubuntu-private-fonts}}} (This process is only for the testing phase! Life will be much easier after release). |
The Ubuntu Font Family are a set of matching new Free- and open-fonts in development during 2010-2011. The development is being funded by Canonical on behalf the wider Free Software community and the Ubuntu project. The technical font design work and implementation is being undertaken by Dalton Maag. Members of the Ubuntu core development team are packaging the font in .deb format.
http://launchpad.net/ubuntu-font-family (project)
http://fonttest.design.canonical.com/ (in-webbrowser online testing/feedback)
http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-font-family/+bugs (bug reports, please do contribute!)
Note: the first version of the font .deb made available to Ubuntu Members on 2010-07-07 accidentally contained 'nda' in the package name. This was immediately fixed within twenty-four hours. A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is not required to test the Ubuntu Font Family.
Contents
Howto
As of 2010-08-20 the font is still in a phased beta, if you have are a member of the many Launchpad groups with access (eg. ubuntu-members), you should be able to:
Click View next to ubuntu-font-beta-testing
Add the personalised archive details to your machine's /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-private-fonts
(This process is only for the testing phase! Life will be much easier after release).
Timeline
As of August 2010, development is on-going and continuous. Snapshots are being gradually rolled out on a phased basis, to wider circles of people, and in larger snapshots as the opportunity of each six-monthly Ubuntu release approaches:
Ubuntu 10.04: very early snapshot used for the 2010 X/K/Ubuntu re-branding exercise
Ubuntu 10.10: Should have four fonts in sans-serif style: Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic
Ubuntu 11.04: Additional fonts, and expanded language coverage, including Monospace for terminal use!
Like all software destined for the Ubuntu main repository, the Ubuntu Font Family will be under a completely Free/open licence before it gets added!
Phased beta
The initial Alpha and Beta testing of the Ubuntu Font Family has been rolled out in phases under progressively more open distribution conditions:
- Canonical design team ("DX"), proprietary, NDAed, Sup3r S3cr3t (later 2009)
- Canonical employees, proprietary, NDAed (early 2010)
- Ubuntu members + web-preview, proprietary (July 2010)
more to come!...
The font family is a long-term project and the phased feedback process is not something that everyone has immediately embraced! It is however a historical development: Dave Crossland (of the Open Font Library) notes on the LWN article that this the first time that a traditional font foundry company has been prepared to release any beta test versions of their in-development fonts. Hopefully in the future the Ubuntu Font Family can be held up as an example of success and open up the possibilities to go even further. Lets make this work!
From a font-designer's point-of-view, half-finished fonts have had the unfortunate habit of getting distributed and spreading the wild ("like viruses"). Mainstream use of incompatible revisions of a typeface cause issues such people's documents re-flowing where characters or metrics are refined between the earlier and the final versions.
References
Ubuntu Developer Summit-M:
The Ubuntu Font Family (Bruno Maag, plenary video offset 34:45 onwards, 2010-08-12)
Making Beautiful Fonts (Bruno Maag, video, 2010-05-12)
Design team
Light: the new look of Ubuntu - A new Ubuntu font (Mark Shuttleworth, 2010-03-04)
The Ubuntu Font (Ivanka Majic, 2010-07-07)
Font Friday (Ivanka Majic, 2010-08-06)
Dalton Maag
The First Milestone (Bruno Maag, 2010-08-10)
Finding the Ubuntu Font Design (Lukas Paltram, 2010-08-13)
News
First look: new Ubuntu font boosts Linux typography, Ars Technica, (Ryan Paul, 2010-07-07)
Ubuntu's font beta sparks discussions about open font development, LWN, (Nathan Willis, 2010-07-21)
Coverage
- 1,200 glyphs
- 200-250 languages
- native languages of 3 billion people!
Fonts
The Ubuntu Font Family is a sans-serif typeface family with an intended coverage of thirteen fonts:
Font |
Regular |
Bold |
Italic |
Bold Italic |
Ubuntu |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Ubuntu Monospace |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Ubuntu Light |
Yes |
|
Yes |
|
Ubuntu Medium |
Yes |
|
Yes |
|
Ubuntu Condensed |
Yes |
|
|
|
Scripts
Latin |
Extended: A+B+more... |
Greek |
Monotonic+Polytonic+variations |
Cyrillic |
Extended |
Arabic |
|
Hebrew |
|
Mathematical |
Limited |
Technology
OpenType-based TTF (TrueType)
- Alternative glyphs (eg. proportional/non-proportional/superscript/subscript numerals)
- Debugging glyphs (U+EFFD, U+EFFE, U+EFFF, U+F000) giving face, version, grayscale level and pixels-per-em digit display)
The pixels-per-em 7-segment digits are driven by the hint engine, so if hinting is by default off (eg. Firefox) then the output will show as a pair of '88' numerals.
Design process
The four Latin characters, 'n o H O' helped to define a guide for around 80-percent of the remaining characters.
Extensive manual hinting has been performed for rendered sizes below 60 pixels-per-em.
Software tools
Dalton Maag are using the following tools:
- Font Lab
- Microsoft Visual
- In-house Python-based accent placement scripts
In Ubuntu:
Gucharmap (Applications->Accessories->Character Map)
fontmatrix (apt-get install fontmatrix)
FontForge (apt-get install fontforge)
FontForge (as of mid-2010) does not handle some extended OpenType features, hopefully having a Free font that uses these features will speed development in being able to support the them!
FAQ
Frequently faked questions:
Q: Will Kubuntu switch to the Ubuntu Regular font for the desktop interface? A: The Kubuntu community will consider it when the font family is in the archive (eg. finalised in form and licence).
Ubuntu Font Family (last edited 2016-01-05 20:18:46 by 108-116-254-130)