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[Freefont-bugs] Free UCS scalable fonts report
From: |
jacob . poon |
Subject: |
[Freefont-bugs] Free UCS scalable fonts report |
Date: |
Wed, 3 Oct 2007 17:59:50 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time) |
Bugs
====
FreeMono
--------
The null/.notdef glyph incorrectly occupies less spaces than other glyphs
in the font.
Low line (U+005F) in italic fonts are not slanted.
Low line (U+005F) in bold fonts do not have heavier weight.
In Latin capital letters A with circumflex (eg: U+00C2, U+1EA4, U+1EA6,
U+1EA8, U+1EAA), tilde (eg: U+00C3), diaeresis (eg: U+00C4, U+01DE), ring
above (eg: U+00C5, U+01FA), macron (eg: U+100), dot above (eg: U+1E0,
U+226), inverted breve (eg: U+202), hook above (eg: U+1EA2, U+1EA8,
U+1EAA, U+1EB2), the accent is shifted to slightly left of the apex of A.
The bug does not exist in other font families.
Latin Capital Letter Thorn (U+00DE) has uneven distance bewteen top and
bottom of vertical bar with respect to the ring, reducing legibility of
the glyph.
Latin ligatures IJ (U+132-133) in all font variants do not have connected
letters within each glyphs, so they are not real ligatures.
Latin letters K with cedilla (U+136-137) have comma below diacritical mark
instead of cedilla.
Latin small letter n preceded by apostrophe (U+149) on all irregular
variants of FreeMono do not contain preceding apostrophe.
Capital Letter NJ (U+01CA) in FreeMono are incorrectly connected.
Latin capital letter A with dot above and macron (U+1E0) in italic fonts
do not have macron aligned to the middle of the respective letters, even
after taking the slant angle into account.
Latin letters A with double grave (U+200-201), inverted breve
(U+0202-0203) have longer right margins than other glyphs in the font.
Consequentially, they incorrectly occupy more spaces than other glyphs in
the font.
Latin capital letters A or R with inverted breve (eg: U+202, U+212),
double grave (U+210), the accent is shifted to slightly left of the apex
of the letter. The bug does not exist in other font families.
Latin small letter dotless j with stroke and hook (U+284) in bold fonts
has 2 horizontal strokes instead of just 1.
Latin small letter squat (U+285) in BoldOblique font is shorter than other
fonts in the same family.
Bold and oblique versions of Latin small letter turned k (U+29E) are
incorrectly moved up from the baseline. The bug does not exist in other
font families.
Latin small letter ts digraph (U+02A6) only has letter t, not s. The bug
does not exist in other font families.
Modifier letter right half ring (U+2BE), Modifier letter left half ring
(U+2BF) in Oblique font have inner arcs drawn in polygon lines instead of
real curves. The bug does not exist in other font variants.
Glyphs in Combining Diacritical Marks (U+300-36F) have asymmetric
horizontal margins, and incorrectly occupy less spaces than other glyphs
in the font. This may be the root cause of the asymmetric accents in
Latin capital letters A as mentioned above, and perhaps some other
unspecified asymmetries.
Greek numeral signs (U+374-375) in BoldOblique font are not slanted.
Cyrillic letters semisoft sign (U+48C-48D) in bold fonts do not have
horizontal stroke. The bug does not exist in other font families. In
addition, there should be no serif at the top of the glyph.
Cyrillic letters er with tick (U+48E-48F) in BoldOblique font do not have
tick.
Cyrillic capital letter Ghe with middle hook (U+494) in BoldOblique font,
Cyrillic small letter ghe with middle hook (U+495) in bold fonts are
incorrectly drawn with Cyrillic letter Ghe.
Cyrillic letters Bashkir ka (U+4A0-4A1) in bold fonts do not have upper
left hooks.
Cyrillic ligatures En Ghe (U+4A4-4A5) in bold fonts do not have upper
right hooks.
Cyrillic capital letter Pe with middle hook (U+4A6) in BoldOblique font,
Cyrillic small letter pe with middle hook (U+4A7) in bold fonts are
incorrectly drawn without middle hook.
Cyrillic letters abkhasian ha (U+4A8-4A9) in all font variants look like
Latin letter C instead of C with curl.
Cyrillic letters es with descender (U+4AA-4AB) in bold fonts do not have
cedilla.
Cyrillic letters abkhasian che (U+4BC-4BF) in bold fonts look like Latin
letter C instead of heavier version of the non-bold glyphs.
Cyrillic letters Ka with hook (U+4C3-4C4) in bold fonts do not have hooks.
Cyrillic letters En with hook (U+4C7-4C8) in bold fonts do not have hooks.
Cyrillic letters Khakassian che (U+4CB-4CC) in bold fonts do not have
tails.
Cyrillic letters schwa (U+4D8-4DB) in bold fonts do not look like inverted
Latin letters e.
Latin small letters b with dot below (U+1E05), line below (U+1E07), have
the diacritical marks not aligned to the middle of the drawn region of the
glyph.
Latin small letters d with dot below (U+1E0B), line below (U+1E0D), have
the diacritical marks not aligned to the middle of the drawn region of the
glyph.
Latin capital letter D with cedilla (U+1E10) in bold and italic variants
do not have cedilla aligned to the middle of the glyph.
Latin small letter d with cedilla (U+1E11) does not have cedilla connected
to the bottom of the circle of the glyph. The bug does not exist in other
variants of the font.
Latin small letter r with dot below and macron (U+1E5D) of the bold and
italic fonts have diacritical mark shifted to the right of the letter.
Latin letters u with tilde and acute (U+1E78-1E79) in bold font have acute
incorrectly shifted to the right of the letter.
Latin capital letters A with hook above (U+1EA2-1EA3), small a with
circumflex and hook above (U+1EA9), Latin letters A with breve and hook
above (eg: U+1EB2-1EB3), incorrectly occupy more space than other glyphs
in the font.
Latin letters A, E, I, O, U, Y with hook above (U+1EA2-1EA3, U+1EA8-1EA9,
U+1EB2-1EB3, U+1EBA-1EBB, U+1EC2-1EC3, U+1EC8-1EC9, U+1ECE-1ECF,
U+1ED4-1ED5, U+1EDE-1EDF, U+1EE6-1EE7, U+1EEC-1EED, U+1EF6-1EF7) in Bold
font do not have hooks aligned to the apexes of cirumflexes, resulting
glyphs incorrectly wider than the rest of glyphs in the font.
Latin letters A with breve and hook above (eg: U+1EB2-1EB3) have breves
and hooks incorrectly overlapped.
Some Latin letters with horn and other accent (U+1EDA-1EEF) in Medium and
Oblique fonts incorrectly have the other accents aligned to horns instead
of the middle of the respective letters, resulting in wider glyphs than
they should be.
Greek capital letters with multiple upper diacritical marks (U+1F0A-0F,
1F1A-1F1F, 1F2A-1F2F, 1F3A-1F3F, 1F4A-1F4F, 1F5A-1F5F, 1F6A-1F6F) of all
font variants incorrectly occupy wider spaces than the rest of the font.
Greek capital letters with prosgegrammeni (U+1F88-1F8F, U+1F98-1F9F,
U+1FA8-1FAF, U+1FBC, U+1FDC, U+1FFC) have prosgegrammeni incorrectly
placed at the right side of the letter instead of at below, in obligue
variant of the font. As a result, the glyphs incorrectly occupy wider
spaces than the rest of the font.
Greek capital letters with oxia (U+1FC9, 1FCB, 1FDB, 1FEB, 1FF9, 1FFB),
capital letter alpha with varia (U+1FBA) in oblique variant of the font
incorrectly occupy wider spaces than the rest of the font.
Greek Psili (U+1FBF) and Greek Dasia (U+1FFE) are incorrectly drawn using
semicircles, which also affects Greek Extended glyphs using the
diacritical marks. The bug does not exist in other font families. They
should look more like commas.
Superscript Latin small letter i (U+2071) in Oblique font is blank instead
of showing actual glyph. The bug does not exist in other font families.
Care of (U+2105) in the oblique font only shows Latin small letter c
instead of actual glyph.
Cada una (U+2106) in the oblique font misses Latin small letter e. The
bug does not exist in other font families.
Double-struck capital letters (U+210D, U+2115, U+2119-211A) only have the
double-struck effect on some vertical strokes, making the glyphs harder to
differentiate. To improve legibility, the vertical strokes should be
replaced by heavy hollowed strokes instead of adding vertical bar to base
glyph.
L B bar symbol (U+2114) does not have a bar crossing between letters.
Inverted ohm sign (U+2127) is incorrectly placed outside the font grid.
The bug does not exist in other font variants.
Parentheses in Miscellaneous Technical (U+2300-23FF) have different font
weights than the rest of the font. In addition, many of the glyphs do not
have proper stroke terminators for the font family.
Top square bracket (U+23B4) shows only blank space rather than a glyph.
The bug does not exist in other font families.
Cross of Jerusalem (U+2629) has 5 crosses instead of 1. The bug does not
exist in other font families.
Braille Pattern glyphs (U+2800-28FF) do not contain white dots, which can
make some glyphs confusingly similar to other punctuations and symbols,
such as Proportion (U+2237), Colon, Diaeresis, Vertical four dots
(U+205E). The bug does not exist in other font families.
There are 2 glyphs assigned to Private Use Area (U+E000-F8FF) in each font
variant, which do not serve any useful purposes. These characters should
be unassigned, and the source glyphs should be removed if they are not
used by other assigned characters in any way.
Latin small ligatures (U+FB00-FB06) in all font variants do not have
connected letters within each glyph, so they are not real ligatures.
Latin small ligature st (U+FB06) does not have letter s. The bug does not
exist in other font families.
Replacement character (U+FFFD) in all font variants uses FreeSans Medium
question mark instead of the glyph from its own font. Consequentially,
the question marks in all bold fonts do not have heavier weights, and the
glyphs in oblique fonts are not slanted.
Replacement character (U+FFFD) in non-Medium font incorrectly occupies
more space than other glyphs in the font.
The font stored 2 copies of 'uni1FEE' glyphs, even though the second copy
was never used. The 2nd copy should be removed.
FreeSans
--------
Latin ligatures IJ (U+132-133) in BoldOblique font do not have letters J.
The bug does not exist in other font families.
Latin letters K with cedilla (U+136-137) have comma below diacritical mark
instead of cedilla.
Latin capital letter K with hook (U+198), Latin small letter lambda with
stroke (U+19B) in all font variants have diagonal stroke terminators
instead of horizontal or vertical, which do not fit the design in the rest
of the font. The bug does not exist in other font families.
Latin letter O with horn (U+1A0-1A1), U with horn (U+1AF-1B0) in non-bold
fonts have diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical,
which do not fit the design in the rest of the font. The bug does not
exist in other font families.
Latin small letter ezh with tail (U+1BA) have diagonal stroke terminators
instead of horizontal or vertical, which do not fit the design in the rest
of the font.
Latin letters R with double grave (U+210-211) in bold or italic fonts has
accent incorrectly shifted to the left.
Latin capital letter R with inverted breve (U+212) has larger right margin
than other Latin capital letter R glyphs. The bug does not exist in other
font variants and families.
Latin capital letter R with inverted breve (U+212) in bold fonts have
accents incorrectly shifted to the left.
Latin small letter c with curl (U+255) have diagonal stroke terminators
instead of horizontal or vertical, which do not fit the design in the rest
of the font. The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.
Latin small letter closed reversed open e (U+25E), Latin small letter l
with belt (U+26C), Latin small letter lezh (U+26E) in oblique font are
blank instead of actual glyphs. The bug does not exist in other font
families.
Latin small letter script g (U+261) in non-italic fonts have diagonal
stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which do not fit the
design in the rest of the font. The bug does not exist in other font
families.
Lower right stroke in Latin letters small capital R (U+280-281) in all
font variants is not the same style as Latin capital R of the same font,
which do not fit the designs in the rest of the respective fonts. The bug
does not exist in other font families.
Latin small letter dotless j with stroke and hook (U+284) in bold or
oblique fonts has 2 horizontal strokes instead of just 1.
Latin small letter esh with curl (U+286), Latin small letter j with
crossed-tail (U+29D) have diagonal stroke terminators instead of
horizontal or vertical, which do not fit the design in the rest of the
font. The bug does not exist in other font families.
Modifier letter right half ring (U+2BE), Modifier letter left half ring
(U+2BF) in Medium font have inner arcs drawn in polygon lines instead of
real curves. The bug does not exist in other font variants.
Combining horn (U+31B) have diagonal stroke terminators instead of
horizontal or vertical, which do not fit the design in the rest of the
font. The bug does not exist in other font families.
Combining retroflex hook below (U+322) shows empty space instead of the
actual glyph. The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.
Combining cedilla (U+327) of all font variants has diagonal stroke
terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the
design in the rest of the font. The bug does not exist in other font
families. The bug also affects other glyphs in the font using cedilla.
Combining half rings (U+31C, U+339, U+351, U+357) of all styles have
three-quarter arcs instead of true half rings.
Combining inverted double arch below (U+32C) of all font variants has
outer arcs curved inwards, not true arches.
Combining seagull below (U+33C) is simply a inverted version of combining
inverted double arch below (U+32C), not true seagull. The bug does not
exist in other font families.
Greek numeral signs (U+374-375) in BoldOblique font are not slanted.
Greek numeral signs (U+374-375) in BoldOblique font are not heavier.
Greek small letter iota with dialytika and tonos (U+390), Greek capital
letter psi (U+3A8), Greek small letter alpha with tonos (U+3AC), Greek
small letter eta with tonos (U+3AE), Greek small letter iota with tonos
(U+3AF), Greek small letter alpha (U+3B1), Greek small letter gamma
(U+3B3), Greek small letter zeta (U+3B6), Greek small letter eta (U+3B7),
Greek small letter iota (U+3B9), Greek small letter lambda (U+3BB), Greek
small letter xi (U+3BE), Greek small letter pi (U+3C0), Greek small letter
final sigma (U+3C2), Greek small letter tau (U+3C4), Greek small letter
phi (U+3C6), Greek small letter omega (U+3C9), Greek small letter iota
with dialytika (U+3CA), Greek small letter omega with tonos (U+3CE), Greek
kappa symbol (U+3F0) in all font variants have diagonal stroke terminators
instead of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the design in the
rest of the font. The bug does not exist in other font families.
Cyrillic capital letter Dje (U+402), Cyrillic capital letter Tshe (U+40B),
Cyrillic letters Che (U+427, U+447, U+4B6-4B9, U+4F4-4F5), Cyrillic
capital letter Ghe with middle hook (U+494), Cyrillic letters pe with
middle hook (U+4A6-4A7), Cyrillic letters Chha (U+4BA-4BB), Cyrillic
letters ka with hook (U+4C3-4C4), Cyrillic letters khakassian Che
(U+4CB-4CC) in all font variants have curve stroke styles similar to
Eurostile instead of Helvetica, which does not fit the design in the rest
of the font.
Cyrillic letters ya (U+42F, U+44F) in all font variants are not
reflections of latin capital letter R within the same font, which do not
fit the designs in the rest of the respective fonts. The bug does not
exist in other font families.
Cyrillic letters abkhasian ha (U+4A8-4A9) in all font variants look like
Latin letter C instead of C with curl.
Hebrew letter yod (U+5D9), Hebrew ligature Yiddish vav yod (U+5F1), Hebrew
ligature Yiddish double yod (U+5F2) in all font variants have diagonal
stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit
the design in the rest of the font. The bug does not exist in other font
families.
Bold glyphs in U+617-61C incorrectly contain Latin glyphs. The bug does
not exist in other font variants and families.
Arabic semicolon (U+61B) in bold font have Latin small letter l instead of
semicolon. The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.
Syriac harklean asteriscus (U+70D) has crooked vertical stroke when viewed
under large font sizes. The bug does not exist in other font variants and
families.
Various glyphs in Devanagari region (U+900-97F), such as Devanagari danda
(U+964), Devanagari double danda (U+965), have diagonal stroke terminators
instead of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the design in the
rest of the font. The bug does not exist in other font variants and
families.
Glyphs in Bengali area (U+980-9FF) in regular and obligue variants have
lighter weight than the rest of the font. The bug does not exist in other
font families.
Glyphs in Gurmukhi area (U+A00-A7F) have lighter weight than the rest of
the font. The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.
Glyphs in Gujarati area (U+A80-AFF) have heavier weight than the rest of
the font. The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.
Glyphs in Oriya (U+B00-B7F), Tamil (U+B80-BFF), Kannada (U+C80-CFF) areas
have lighter weight than the rest of the font. The bug does not exist in
other font variants and families.
Latin capital letter D with cedilla (U+1E10) of all variants do not have
cedilla aligned to the middle of the glyph.
Latin capital letter D with circumflex below (U+1E12) of all variants have
diacritical mark shifted to the left of the letter. The bug does not
exist in other font families.
Latin letters H with cedilla (U+1E28, U+1E29) in bold fonts do not have
cedilla attached to the lower left end of the letters.
Latin capital letter P with dot above (U+1E56), R with dot above (U+1E58),
R dot below and macron (U+1E5C) have diacritical mark shifted to the left
of the letter. The bug does not exist in other font families.
Latin small letter r with dot below and macron (U+1E5D) of the bold font
have diacritical mark shifted to the right of the letter.
Latin small letter u with diaeresis below (U+1E73), tilde below (U+1E75),
circumflex below (U+1E77) of all variants have diacritical mark shifted to
the left of the letter. The bug does not exist in other font families.
Latin letters u with tilde and acute (U+1E78-1E79) in all font variants
have acute incorrectly shifted to the right of the letter.
Latin capital letter E with circumflex and grave (U+1EC0) has grave accent
not above circumflex. The bug does not exist in other font variants and
families.
Latin letters with horn and other accent (U+1EDA-1EEF) in bold fonts
incorrectly have the other accents aligned to horns instead of the middle
of the respective letters, resulting in wider glyphs than they should be.
Greek small letters alpha, eta, iota, omega with psili, dasia, varia,
oxia, perispomeni, ypogegrammeni, yrachy, macron, dialytika (U+1F00-1FFF)
in all font variants have diagonal stroke terminators instead of
horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the
font. The bug does not exist in other font families.
Greek capital letters with prosgegrammeni (U+1F88-1F8F, U+1F98-1F9F,
U+1FA8-1FAF, U+1FBC, U+1FDC, U+1FFC) have prosgegrammeni incorrectly
placed at the right side of the letter instead of at below, in all font
variants.
Greek capital letters Eta with psili (U+1F9A-1F9D) in Oblique font have
wider gap between psili and the letter than other fonts in the family.
The bug does not exist in other font families.
Superscript Latin small letter i (U+2071) in Oblique font is in subscript
position instead of superscript position. The bug does not exist in other
font families.
Euro sign (U+20AC) in all font variants has diagonal stroke terminators
instead of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the design in the
rest of the font. Although official Euro currency symbol has diagonal
stroke terminators, the symbol used in the font is not meant to be an
exact replica of the official symbol, nor the glyph needs to be an exact
replica to be uniquely recognizable. In fact, Euro sign in FreeMono does
not have diagonal stroke terminators. The glyph should be redesigned as
Latin capital letter C with 2 equal length horizontal strokes intersecting
letter C.
The script and black-letter glyphs in Letterlike Symbols (U+2100-214F) do
not fit the design characteristic of the font. Although the explicit
style descriptions of the characters limit to how a glyph is designed
without contradicting the description, the script and black-letter glyphs
glyphs can still be made to fit the design by using fixed stroke width
with flat stroke terminator, similar to how the 'Courier' script and
black-letter glyphs in FreeMono. In fact, the script and black-letter
glyphs in MS Gothic 2.5 and 5.00 family are designed in manners as
mentioned above. The script glyphs in non-oblique fonts should be
strighten up.
Script capital F (U+2131) is not a script capital at all. In fact, it
looks like obligue Latin capital letter F with hook and obligue Latin
small letter F overlapping each other. The bug does not exist in other
font variants and families.
Arrows in Arrows area (U+2190-21FF) in BoldOblique font are not slanted.
Tilde and slash in Mathematical Operators (U+2200-22FF) in all font
variants have diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or
vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.
Ironically, slash in FreeSerif is actually designed correctly for use in
FreeSans. For that matter, Inverse lazy S (U+223E) in current font is
more proper design for the tilde.
Partial differential (U+2202) in Oblique and BoldOblique fonts has uneven
stroke weight within a glyph, which do not fit the designs in the rest of
the respective fonts.
N-Ary summation (U+2211) in non-medium font variants have serifs, which do
not fit the designs in the rest of the respective fonts. Furthermore, the
glyphs in all font variants have the same weight.
Asterisk operator (U+2217) has a non-uniform stroke weight, which does not
fit the design in the rest of the font. The bug does not exist in other
font variants and families.
Square root (U+221A) in all font variants has non-uniform font weight
within the glyph, and share the same font weight for bold and non-bold
fonts, which do not fit the designs in the rest of the respective fonts.
The bug does not exist in other font families.
Angle (U+2220), Logical operators (U+2227-222A) have lighter font weights
than the rest of the font. The bug does not exist in other font variants
and families.
Logical or (U+2228) has diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal
or vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font. The
bug does not exist in other font variants and families.
Integral (U+222B), double integral (U+222C), triple integral (U+222D),
contour integral (U+222E) in all font variants have diagonal stroke
terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the
design in the rest of the font. The bug does not exist in other font
families.
Integral (U+222B) in bold font is slanted instead of upright.
Inverse lazy S (U+223E) looks more like tilde instead of letter S. The
bug does not exist in other font families.
Diameter sign (U+2300) has lighter font weights than the rest of the font.
The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.
Half integrals (U+2320-2321) have diagonal stroke terminators instead of
horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the
font. The bug does not exist in other font families. In addition, the
glyphs do not reach their respective character cell vertical margins,
which can cause equation editors to leave a gap when constructing large
integral symbol.
Left one quarter block (U+258E), left one eighth block (U+258F), right one
eighth block (U+2595) have incorrectly wider right margins than the other
block glyphs of the same class.
Lozenge (U+25CA) in bold fonts does not have heavier stroke weight. The
bug does not exist in other font families.
Lozenge (U+25CA) in Oblique font is not slanted.
Dotted circle (U+25CC) is blank instead of showing actual glyph. The bug
does not exist in other font variants and families. In addition, dotted
circle (U+25CC) in bold font has dashed circle instead of dotted circle.
Musical symbols (U+2669-266F) in all font variants have uneven stroke
weights, which do not fit the designs in the rest of the respective fonts.
The bug does not exist in other font families.
White florette (U+2741) of all font variants has both black and white
petals instead of just white. The bug does not exist in other font
families.
Eight petalled outlined black florette (U+2742) of all font variants has
12 white petals instead of 8 black petals. The bug does not exist in
other font families.
Glyphs in CJK Symbols and Punctuation (U+3000-303F), Hiragana
(U+3040-309F), Katakana (U+30A0-30FF) regions in all font variants have
higher base line than the rest of the font.
Ideographic comma (U+3001), ideographic full stop (U+3002), ditto mark
(U+3003), ideographic iteration mark (U+3005), left white corner bracket
(U+300E), right white corner bracket (U+300F) have font weights different
from the rest of the font, which does not fit the design in the rest of
the font.
Ideographic comma (U+3001), ideographic full stop (U+3002), ideographic
iteration mark (U+3005), left angle bracket (U+3008), right angle bracket
(U+3009), left angle double bracket (U+300A), right angle double bracket
(U+300B), left corner bracket (U+300C), right white bracket (U+300D), left
white corner bracket (U+300E), right white corner bracket (U+300F), left
black lenticular bracket (U+3010), right black lenticular bracket
(U+3011), left tortoise shell bracket (U+3014), right tortoise shell
bracket (U+3015), combining katakana-hiragana voiced sound mark (U+3099),
katakana-hiragana voiced sound mark (U+309B) have wider than normal
horizontal margins. Because the font is proportionally spaced, horizontal
margins of these glyphs should be made proportional, as in the rest of the
font. However, U+3099 is intended to be used for glyph compositing
purpose, so this glyph should have the same width as the rest of the
full-width kana glyphs.
Ideographic number zero (U+3007) is incorrectly drawn as ellipse.
Left angle bracket (U+3008), right angle bracket (U+3009), left corner
bracket (U+300C), right white bracket (U+300D), left tortoise shell
bracket (U+3014), right tortoise shell bracket (U+3015) have obvious signs
of strokes crossing each other at the stroke intersections. In addition,
the glyphs have round stroke terminators instead of horizontal or
vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.
Glyphs in Hiragana (U+3040-309F), Katakana (U+30A0-30FF) regions in all
font variants have diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or
vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font. The bug
does not exist in other font families.
Glyphs in Hiragana (U+3040-309F), Katakana (U+30A0-30FF) regions in all
font variants have higher baselines than the rest of the font. These
characters should be treated as characters in Block Elements region, but
the baseline of these glyphs should be between the baseline for Latin
characters and the bottom margin of Latin descender.
Small letters in Hiragana (U+3040-309F), Katakana (U+30A0-30FF) regions in
all font variants occupy same widths as the full-sized counterpart, which
does not fit the design in the rest of the font. Because the font is
proportionally spaced, horizontal margins of these glyphs should be same
as the rest of the font.
There are 12-15 characters in the Private Use Area (U+E000-F8FF) in each
font variant, which do not serve any useful purposes. These characters
should be unassigned, and the source glyphs should be removed if they are
not used by other assigned characters in any way.
Latin small ligatures (U+FB00-FB06) in all font variants do not have
connected letters within each glyph, so they are not real ligatures.
Hebrew letter yod with hiriq (U+FB1D), Hebrew ligature Yiddish yod yod
patah (U+FB1F), Hebrew letter yod with dagesh (U+FB39) in all font
variants have diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or
vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font. The bug
does not exist in other font families.
Replacement character (U+FFFD) in all font variants uses FreeSans Medium
question mark instead of the glyph from its own font. Consequentially,
the question marks in all bold fonts do not have heavier weights, and the
glyphs in oblique fonts are not slanted.
FreeSerif
---------
Asterisk (U+002A), plus sign (U+002B), full stop (U+002E), less-than sign
(U+003C), equal sign (U+003D), greater-than sign (U+003E), Commercial at
(U+0040), Circumflex accent (U+005E), Low line (U+005F), Vertical line
(U+007C), Currency sign (U+00A4), Broken bar (U+00A6), copyright sign
(U+00A9), Not sign (U+00AC), registered sign (U+00AE), degree sign
(U+00B0), plus-minus sign (U+00B1), middle dot (U+00B7), multiplication
sign (U+00D7), division sign (U+00F7) in italic fonts are not slanted.
The bug does not exist in other font families.
Solidus (U+002F) in Italic and BoldItalic fonts have differenet slanting
angles. The more slanted angle should be used on both italic fonts.
Commercial at (U+0040), degree sign (U+00B0) in bold fonts do not have
heavier weights. The bug does not exist in other font families.
Low line (U+005F) in bold fonts do not have heavier weight.
Tilde (U+007E) in all font variants has uniform stroke weight, which does
not fit the design in the rest of the font. Tilde from tilde operator
(U+223C) of the same font should be used.
Latin capital ligature IJ (U+132) in all font variants, Latin small
ligature ij (U+133) in non-italic fonts do not have connected letters
within each glyphs, so they are not real ligatures.
Latin letters K with cedilla (U+136-137) have comma below diacritical mark
instead of cedilla.
Latin letter dental click (U+01C0) in BoldItalic font is not slanted. The
bug does not exist in other font families.
Latin letters A with diaeresis and macron (U+1DE-1DF) in italic fonts do
not have macrons aligned to the middle of the respective letters, even
after taking the slant angle into account.
Latin letters A with dot above and macron (U+1E0-1E1) in Bold font have
incorrectly wider right margins. The bug does not exist in other font
variants and families.
Latin capital letter A with dot above and macron (U+1E0) in italic fonts
do not have macron aligned to the middle of the respective letters, even
after taking the slant angle into account.
Latin capital letters G with acute (U+1F4-1FB) do not have acute. The bug
does not exist in other font variants and families.
Latin letters A with ring above and acute (U+1FA-1FB) do not have acutes.
The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.
Latin letters A with double grave (U+200-201), A with inverted breve
(U+202-203), E with double grave (U+204-205), E with inverted breve
(U+206-207), capital I with double grave (U+208), capital I with inverted
breve (U+20A), O with double grave (U+20C-20D), O with inverted breve
(U+20E-20F), U with double grave (U+214-215), U with inverted breve
(U+216-217) in Bold font have incorrectly wider right margins. The bug
does not exist in other font variants.
Latin small letter i with double grave (U+209) in Bold and Italic fonts
has accent incorrectly shifted to the left. The bug does not exist in
other font variants and families.
Latin capital letter O with double grave (U+20C) in bold font has accent
incorrectly shifted to the right. The bug does not exist in other font
variants and families.
Latin letters R with double grave (U+210-211) in bold or italic fonts has
accent incorrectly shifted to the left.
Latin capital letter R with inverted breve (U+212) in bold or italic
fonts, Latin small letter R with inverted breve (U+213) in Italic font,
have accents incorrectly shifted to the left.
Latin letters U with double grave (U+214-215) in Bold font have accents
incorrectly shifted to the right.
Latin capital letter A with dot above (U+226) in italic fonts has accent
incorrectly shifted to the right.
Latin small letter turner r with hook (U+27B) in Medium font has 1 too
many serifs. The bug does not exist in other font families.
Latin small letter dotless j with stroke and hook (U+284) in all font
variants has 2 strokes instead of just 1.
Latin small letter squat (U+285) in Medium font is shorter than other
fonts in the same family.
Modifier letter right half ring (U+2BE), Modifier letter left half ring
(U+2BF) in Medium font have three-quarter arcs instead of true half rings.
The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.
Dot above (U+2D9), ring above (U+2DA) in italic fonts are not slanted.
The bug does not exist in other font families.
Combining macron (U+304), combining overline (U+305), combining dot above
(U+307), combining diaeresis (U+308), combining ring above (U+30A),
combining dot below (U+323), combining diaeresis below (U+324), combining
ring below (U+325), combining stroke overlays (U+335-336) in italic fonts
are not slanted. The bug also affects glyphs using the diacritical marks.
The bug does not exist in other font families.
Combining vertical line above (U+30D), Combining double vertical line
above (U+30E) in BoldItalic font are not slanted. The bug does not exist
in other font families.
Combining half rings (U+31C, U+339, U+351, U+357) of all styles have
three-quarter arcs instead of true half rings. The bug affects other
characters containing half rings, such as Latin small letter a with right
halfring (U+1E9A).
Combining inverted double arch below (U+32B) of all font variants has
outer arcs curved into middle, not true arches.
Combining grave tone mark (U+340), combining acute tone mark (U+341),
combining Greek koronis (U+343) show empty spaces instead of the actual
glyphs. The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.
Combining double tilde (U+360), combining double inverted breve (U+361) in
non-Medium fonts have swapped glyphs. The bug does not exist in other
font families.
Greek numeral signs (U+374-375) in BoldItalic font are not slanted.
Greek ano teleia (U+387) in italic fonts are not slanted. The bug does
not exist in other font families.
Greek letters stigma (U+3DA-3DB) in bold fonts look different from
non-bold versions. The bug does not exist in other font families. They
should look more like the non-bold glyphs.
Greek small letter digamma (U+3DD) in all font variants looks more like a
cursive Latin capital F than digamma, which do not fit the designs in the
rest of the respective fonts. It should look more like a Roman glyph, but
without serif at the bottom.
Greek letter koppa (U+3DE) in BoldItalic font look different from Medium
versions. The bug does not exist in other font families. Both glyphs
should look more like the revered Latin capital letter N with hooks at
stroke terminators.
Greek letter sampi (U+3E0) in Medium font is different from glyphs in
other variants. The bug does not exist in other font families. It should
look more like small sampi.
Cyrillic capital letter Kje (U+40C) in BoldItalic font has accent
incorrectly shifted to the left. The bug does not exist in other font
families.
Cyrillic letters semisoft sign (U+48C-48D) in all font variants
incorrectly include serifs at the top. There should be no serif at the
top of the glyph.
Cyrillic letters er with tick (U+48E-48F) in Italic font do not have tick.
Cyrillic small letter ghe with stroke (U+493) has different appearence
between Italic and BoldItalic fonts. The styling of Italic font should be
used on BoldItalic font.
Cyrillic capital letter Ghe with middle hook (U+494) in Bold font,
Cyrillic small letter ghe with middle hook (U+495) in italic fonts are
incorrectly drawn with Cyrillic letter Ghe.
Cyrillic letters Bashkir ka (U+4A0-4A1) in italic fonts do not have upper
left hooks.
Cyrillic ligatures En Ghe (U+4A4-4A5) in italic fonts do not have upper
right hooks.
Cyrillic capital letter Pe with middle hook (U+4A6) in Bold font, Cyrillic
small letter pe with middle hook (U+4A7) in italic fonts are incorrectly
drawn without middle hook.
Cyrillic letters abkhasian ha (U+4A8-4A9) in non-medium font variants look
like Latin letter C instead of C with curl.
Cyrillic letters es with descender (U+4AA-4AB) in italic fonts do not have
cedilla.
Cyrillic letters abkhasian che (U+4BC-4BF) in bold fonts to not have hook
at the upper left of the letter. Furthermore, Cyrillic letters abkhasian
che with descender (U+4BE-4BF) in bold fonts do not have descender.
Cyrillic letters Ka with hook (U+4C3-4C4) in non-Medium fonts do not have
hooks.
Cyrillic letters En with hook (U+4C7-4C8) in italic fonts do not have
hooks.
Cyrillic letters Khakassian che (U+4CB-4CC) in italic fonts do not have
tails.
Cyrillic small letter palochka (U+4CF) has an acute accent instead of the
actual letter glyph, and has unusally wide left margin. The bugs do not
exist in other font families. The glyph should look like Latin small
letter l.
Cyrillic letters schwa (U+4D8, U+4DA) in Medium and Italic fonts do not
have the inverted Latin letters e. The bug does not exist in other font
variants.
Cyrillic small letter u with macron (U+4EF) in Bold font has unusally wide
right margin. The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.
Arabic-Indic digits (U+660-669), Arabic decimal separator (U+66B) have
glyphs at superscript positions instead of at baseline.
Glyphs in Thaana region (U+780-7BF) have round stroke terminators instead
of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of
the font.
Glyphs in Bengali (U+980-9FF), Gurmukhi (U+A00-A7F) regions in all font
variant have lighter weights than the rest of the respective fonts.
Glyphs in Ethiopic region (U+1200-137F) in medium font are incorrectly
slanted. The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.
These glyphs should be straighened up. The already slanted glyphs should
be moved to the italic font.
Latin letter small capital barred B (U+1D03) does not have a horizontal
bar crossing the middle of the letter. The bug does not exist in other
font variants and families.
Latin letter small capital K (U+1D0B) has capital letter J instead of K.
The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.
Latin letter small capital L with stroke (U+1D0C) has capital letter K
instead of proper glyph. The bug does not exist in other font variants
and families.
Latin letter small capital M (U+1D0D) has capital letter L instead of M.
The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.
Latin letter small capital reversed N (U+1D0E) has capital letter M
instead of proper glyph. The bug does not exist in other font variants
and families.
Latin small letter d with cedilla (U+1E11) in all font variants does not
have cedilla connected to the bottom of the circle of the glyph. The bug
does not exist in other font families.
Latin letters H with cedilla (U+1E28, U+1E29) in all font variants do not
have cedilla attached to the lower left end of the letters.
Latin letters N with circumflex below (U+1E4A-1E4B) in italic fonts do not
have diacritical marks aligned to the middle of the letter. The bug does
not exist in other font families.
Latin small letter a with right half ring (U+1E9A) has three-quarter ring
accent instead of true half ring. The bug does not exist in other font
variants and families.
Latin letters A with circumflex and hook above (U+1EA8-1EA9) in Bold font
do not have hooks aligned to the apexes of cirumflexes, resulting
incorrectly wider glyphs.
Latin letters A, E, I, O, U, Y with hook above (U+1EA2-1EA3, U+1EA8-1EA9,
U+1EBA-1EBB, U+1EC2-1EC3, U+1EC8-1EC9, U+1ECE-1ECF, U+1ED4-1ED5,
U+1EDE-1EDF, U+1EE6-1EE7, U+1EEC-1EED, U+1EF6-1EF7) in all font variants
do not have hooks aligned to the middle of the letter, resulting glyphs
incorrectly wider than the rest of glyphs in the font.
Latin letters A with breve and hook above (U+1EB2-1EB3) in Bold font have
breves and hooks incorrectly overlapped.
Latin letters with horn and other accent (U+1EDA-1EEF) in italic fonts
incorrectly have the other accents aligned to horns instead of the middle
of the respective letters, resulting in wider glyphs than they should be.
Greek capital letters with prosgegrammeni (U+1F88-1F8F, U+1F98-1F9F,
U+1FA8-1FAF, U+1FBC, U+1FDC, U+1FFC) in all font variants have
prosgegrammeni incorrectly placed at the right side of the letter instead
of at below, resulting in wider glyphs than they should be.
Zero width non-joiner (U+200C), Zero width joiner (U+200D) in non-italic
fonts are blank instead of showing proper glyphs. The bug does not exist
in other font families.
Left-to-right mark (U+200E), right-to-left mark (U+200F) in Bold font are
blank instead of showing proper glyphs. The bug does not exist in other
font families.
Bullets (U+2022-2023), dot leaders (U+2024-2025), horizontal ellipsis
(U+2026), per mille sign (U+2030), per ten shousand sign (U+2031),
reference mark (U+203B), asterism (U+2042), fraction slash (U+2044) in
italic fonts are not slanted. The bug does not exist in other font
families.
Prime (U+2032) in Bold font is not place in superscript position.
Ties (U+203F-2040) in Italic font are not slanted. The bug does not exist
in other font families.
Euro sign (U+20AC) has inconsistent horizontal strokes and serifs across
font variants. Although official Euro currency symbol has diagonal stroke
terminators, the symbol used in the font is not meant to be an exact
replica of the official symbol, nor the glyph needs to be an exact replica
to be uniquely recognizable. In fact, Euro sign in FreeMono does not have
diagonal stroke terminators. Latin capital letter C should be based on
the respective glyphs used in Basic Latin area, for all font variants.
Lengths of horizontal strokes should be the same across variants.
Guarani sign (U+20B2) looks like Cedi sign instead of Latin capital G with
vertical stroke. The bug does not exist in other font variants and
families.
The script glyphs and planck constants in Letterlike Symbols (U+2100-214F)
in the non-italic fonts do not fit the design characteristic of the font.
The glyphs in non-italic fonts should be strighten up.
The bold versions of script and black-letter glyphs (U+2100-214F) have
different stroke paths from the non-bold counterparts. The bug does not
exist in other font families.
Double-struck capital letters (U+2102, U+210D, U+2115, U+2119-211A) only
have the double-struck effect on some vertical strokes, making the glyphs
harder to differentiate. To improve legibility, the vertical strokes
should be hollowed instead of adding vertical bar to base glyph.
Care of (U+2105) shows blank space instead of actual glyph.
Sound recording copyright (U+2118), trade mark sign (U+2122), Estimated
symbol (U+212E) in italic fonts is not slanted. The bug does not exist in
other font families.
Inverted ohm sign (U+2127) in BoldItalic font is incorrectly placed
outside the font grid.
Glyphs in Arrows region (U+2190-21FF) in BoldItalic font are not slanted.
Partial differential (U+2202) in non-bold fonts are equally slanted, which
do not fit the designs in the rest of the respective fonts. The glyph in
Bold font is more slanted than the BoldItalic font.
Mathematical operators (U+2206-22FF) for italic fonts, except infinity
(U+221E) and integrals (U+222B-222F), are not slanted.
N-Ary summation (U+2211) in all font variants have the same weight, which
do not fit the designs in the rest of the respective fonts.
Square root (U+221A) in italic variants look exactly the same as the
non-italic versions, which do not fit the designs in the rest of the
respective fonts. The bug does not exist in other font families.
Integral (U+222B) in bold font is slanted instead of upright.
Half integrals (U+2320-2321) do not reach their respective character cell
vertical margins, which can cause equation editors to leave a gap when
constructing large integral symbol.
Box drawings dashes (U+2504-250B) have blank glyphs instead of actual
dashes. The bug does not exist in other font variants and families. In
additions, the glyphs are wider than other box drawing glyphs.
Left one quarter block (U+258E) in bold font, left one eighth block
(U+258F) in bold and medium fonts, right one eighth block (U+2595) in bold
and medium fonts have incorrectly wider right margins than the other block
glyphs of the same class.
Lozenge (U+25CA) in italic fonts is not slanted.
Dotted circle (U+25CC) has dashed circle instead of dotted circle. The
bug does not exist in other font variants.
Reversed rotated floral heart bullet (U+2619) is not reversed. The bug
does not exist in other font variants and families.
Pluto (U+2647) has sans serif PL ligature instead of serif PL, which does
not fit the design characteristics of the font.
Pisces (U+2653) does no have horizontal stroke go through the curves. The
bug does not exist in other font variants and families.
Black diamond minus X (U+2756) has outermost diamond edges curved inwards.
Glyphs in CJK Symbols and Punctuation (U+3000-303F), Hiragana
(U+3040-309F), Katakana (U+30A0-30FF) regions in all font variants have
higher base line than the rest of the font. In addition, the bold glyphs
have the same weight as the regular font.
Ideographic comma (U+3001), ideographic full stop (U+3002), ditto mark
(U+3003), ideographic iteration mark (U+3005), left angle bracket
(U+3008), right angle bracket (U+3009), left angle double bracket
(U+300A), right angle double bracket (U+300B), left corner bracket
(U+300C), right white bracket (U+300D), left white corner bracket
(U+300E), right white corner bracket (U+300F), left black lenticular
bracket (U+3010), right black lenticular bracket (U+3011), left tortoise
shell bracket (U+3014), right tortoise shell bracket (U+3015), combining
katakana-hiragana voiced sound mark (U+3099), katakana-hiragana voiced
sound mark (U+309B) have wider than normal horizontal margins. Because
the font is proportionally spaced, horizontal margins of these glyphs
should be made proportional, as in the rest of the font. However, U+3099
is intended to be used for glyph compositing purpose, so this glyph should
have the same width as the rest of the full-width kana glyphs.
Ideographic number zero (U+3007) is incorrectly drawn as ellipse.
Small letters in Hiragana (U+3040-309F), Katakana (U+30A0-30FF) regions in
all font variants occupy same widths as the full-sized counterpart, which
does not fit the design in the rest of the font. Because the font is
proportionally spaced, horizontal margins of these glyphs should be same
as the rest of the font.
Glyphs in Hiragana (U+3040-309F), Katakana (U+30A0-30FF) regions in all
font variants have higher baselines than the rest of the font. These
characters should be treated as characters in Block Elements region, but
the baseline of these glyphs should be between the baseline for Latin
characters and the bottom margin of Latin descender.
Bold glyphs in Hiragana (U+3040-309F), Katakana (U+30A0-30FF) regions do
not have heavier weights.
There are 12-40 glyphs assigned to Private Use Area (U+E000-F8FF) in each
font variant, which do not serve any useful purposes. These characters
should be unassigned, and the source glyphs should be removed if they are
not used by other assigned characters in any way.
Arabic ligature allah isolated form (U+FDF2) has unusually wide left
margin. Furthermore, the glyph is incorrectly placed outside the font
grid. The bugs do not exist in other font variants and families.
Replacement character (U+FFFD) in all font variants uses FreeSans Medium
question mark instead of the glyph from its own font. Consequentially,
the question marks in all bold fonts do not have heavier weights, and the
glyphs in italic fonts are not slanted.
General
-------
The fonts are currently not hinted, making them look distorted at under 36
points or under, and strokes in glyphs disappear at 12 (18 in some cases)
points or under. This make the fonts unsuitable for screen use, or any
application requiring small font sizes. The fonts should at least be
hinted with FontForge's Autohint first.
Apparantly the encoding tables of Free Sans and Free Serif are not
properly set, which causes Windows Font Viewer to show square blocks in
font preview. It does not affect bold and italic variants of the fonts.
The MES conformance tests used in the source is out of date. Even though
the code ranges are the same, number of glyphs specified by the pages
required to comply with each MES level are increased as a result of
Unicode updates. This causes current fonts to fail MES tests.
The line heights of all 3 families are taller than the free URW fonts for
which the free UCS fonts are based. The line heights are also taller than
Arial Unicode, which itself is taller than Arial, Courier New, and Times
New Roman. The extra heights only serve to reduce the number of
characters that can fit in a screen. Besides, the extra margins are not
needed to fit the glyphs with accents (including multiple-accented Latin
Extended Additional/B and Greek Extended glyphs), it only needs compressed
double-height accents to fit the gap. Screen estate aside, characters
such as top half integral (U+2320), bottom half integral (U+2321),
summation top (U+2322), summation bottom (U+2323), are no longer connected
when arranged vertically; glyphs in Box Drawing (U+2500-257F) and Block
Elements (U+2580-259F) do not function like they supposed to, which can
prevent equation editors and monospaced applications from working
properly.
Currently the amount of symbols across font families are not the same,
which is unusual since unlike letters, the stylings of symbols do not tend
to change across font families. Affected regions include Combining
Diacritical Marks for Symbols, Letterlike Symbols, Arrows, Mathematical
Operators, Miscellaneous Technical, Optical Character Recognition, Box
Drawing, Block Elements, Geometric Shapes, Miscellaneous Symbols,
Dingbats, Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A, Supplemental Arrows-A,
Braille Patterns, Supplemental Arrows-B, Miscellaneous Mathematical
Symbols-B, Supplemental Mathematical Operators, Supplemental Punctuation,
Yijing Hexagram Symbols. Some of the missing symbols can be found in IPA
Mona Font, Kochi Gothic/Mincho, which also include glyphs for Enclosed
Alphanumerics, CJK Symbols and Punctuation, Enclosed CJK Letters and
Months, CJK Compatibility.
In each font family, the development of the regular font is way far ahead
of the bold and italic counterparts. Furthermore, the character set being
covered between families are inconsistent. To fast track the
synchronization of glyphs across the font family, UCS source should start
building automated scripts that generate different font weights and styles
from the base font, and glyphs that can be created by using other glyphs
within the same font. Currently Free Monospaced Oblique and Free Serif
Oblique contain only slanted glyphs of the base font, so that shouldn't be
too difficult for them. A long term solution is to have source glyphs
built on strokes formats like Metafont, SVG, or Type 3, which allows font
developers to create glyphs of multiple styles, weights, and widths simply
by writing the strokes with pen or mouse, then use algorithms to transform
the strokes into font families of choice. In addition, stroke based fonts
are easier to maintain even within a font family, simply because fewer
control points are needed to represent a glyph. Fortunately, FontForge
can handle Type 3 and SVG strokes, but the Metafont sources used by the
project need to be converted to Type 3 or SVG first.
Apparantly the Free UCS Font families are missing text descriptions
describing the fonts' characteristics, which are necessary to build proper
glyphs for a font family, especially glyphs for other languages. Here are
some suggestions for the base fonts:
FreeMono: A serif fixed width font with fixed light font weight, rounded
stroke terminator.
FreeSans: A serif proportional width font with fixed medium font weight,
with vertical or horizontal flat stroke terminator.
FreeSerif: A serif proportional width font with light horizontal and heavy
vertical font weights, with flat, rounded, or pointed stroke terminator.
Documentation
-------------
The documentation incorrectly referred that the fonts are not anymore
available on the Web. Last time I checked, the fonts have been hosted in
SourceForge site after Microsoft had yanked them out of its own corporate
pages. And thanks to file sharing networks, the core fonts, as well as
the later versions of these fonts (including Windows Vista counterparts)
and more, are perpetually available somewhere in the web.
I know there are legal and moral issues involved, and I do believe in
software freedom, and really hate to see this and many other free software
projects have become the perpetual underdogs. But the truth is, the
existing arguments are not going to help developing UCS fonts, when the
non-free products can be obtained very easily with almost zero chances of
getting caught (in fact, in countries like Canada, it isn't even illegal
to download copyright infringing materials), and the current free UCS
fonts simply can't compete in quality. Also, unlike other software, the
core fonts are relatively maintenance free, so there is little chance of
someone calling Microsoft over the font's incompatibility (even if there
are, the source of the faults are mostly anything but the fonts
themselves). If that's not bad enough, there are active user groups that
mix, match, and hack proprietary fonts with zero regards to EULA, which in
itself has questionable legal enforcibility (though in this case, there
may also be issues of legality of knock-off fonts).
At best, your existing arguments are only relevant to corporate entities,
who have much less chance of escaping infringement lawsuits. But for
them, cost of paying for fonts are relatively trivial, especially when
they are more capable to obtain volume discounts than average end users
while obtaining some, even if limited, degrees of support. On the other
hand, Free UCS Outline Fonts come with no warranty. Combining with the
fact that Free UCS fonts are not popluar to begin with, average end users
and corporate entities alike have much better chance of finding community
support for the Core Fonts for the Web than Free UCS fonts ever can.
If this, or any other free software project, want to have a shot of
replacing the evil proprietary software(tm) in a world of full of
unrepentent freeloaders who are willing and able to get whatever software
they want, virutually in anywhere, at any time, by any means necessary, it
needs to compete in quality. It is an unfair fight, but this is the kind
of environment this project has to compete in. Since current Free UCS
Outline Fonts are not exactly in competitive shape, and last time I
checked, it hasn't been updated for over a year, it will need some proper
marketing to attract development resources. I am not a marketer, nor do I
know of any marketer I can refer you to, but I do know a key of successful
marketing is to be honest. I am not saying there are fraudulent intent
involved, but claiming core fonts for the Web are unavailable on the Web
when they have been hosted by SourceForge for YEARS does not sound like
honesty to me. The statements need to be updated to honestly reflect the
current state of the competitions, especially on technical qualities.
The other thing about marketing is, you need to send the right message to
the right people. Unfortunately, that means the freedom rhetoric your
home page is boasting is more of a turn off to would be users and
developers than a selling point. That is not to say you should not
advertise freedom, but rather, you should do it more strategically. More
on that later. To attaract users at the first place, you need to market
pragmatic advantages over the competition. Fortunately, the saving grace
comes from the vast amount of glyphs in all 3 font families. Free Mono
has more glyphs than Courier (374 chars), Courier by Linotype (248 chars),
Courier PS (253 chars), Courier Line Draw (233 char), Monotype Courier 12
(253 chars); Free Sans has more glyphs than Helvetica Roman (388 chars),
Helvetica World (1862 chars), Neue Helvetica (390 chars); Free Serif
currently has more glyphs and support more code pages than even the Times
New Roman 5.00 (Windows Vista version) (2790 chars), CG Times (249 chars),
Times Std Roman (408 chars), Times Europa (253 chars). It is time to
exploit these advantages against similar proprietary fonts for all they
worth. However, keep in mind that quantity of characters are not the only
benchmark of superiority, especially when the FreeFont families have
uneven distributions of glyphs across variants. It is just a gateway to
attract developers into refining the fonts in other areas, before the
temporary edge is gone.
When dealing with fonts that need progress to catch up against the latest
proprietary counterparts, the homepage should include progress chart, to
inform users of the progress towards beating the competition, to create
the impressions this project is capable to compete against commercial
foundaries.
When dealing with freedom issue, remember that end users usually do not
get hit by much, because they can simply get the non-free fonts with ease
and virually no consequences. This message should be targeted to
corporate customers, because they are the ones who cannot get away with
copyright infringements. In the project homepage, information on freedom
should put into a separate section, for corporate users. However, unless
there is an active community for the Free UCS scalable fonts project, this
particular feature should be in the footnote section, because you can't
back up these users unless the font can compete in quality against the
oppositions, and you can't compete against proprietary counterparts unless
there is an active development community rather than the divided efforts
in current state.
I hope that helps giving the project a clearer direction for it to
develop.
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