Ubuntu Font Family
Encyclopedia
Ubuntu Font Family is an OpenType
TTF
based font, designed to be a modern humanist-style font by London-based type foundry
Dalton Maag, with funding by Canonical Ltd. The font was under development for nearly nine months, with only a limited initial release through a beta program, until September 2010. It was then that it became the new default font of the Ubuntu operating system
in Ubuntu 10.10.
The Ubuntu Font Family is licensed under the Ubuntu Font Licence.
The monospace version, use in terminals, was initially planned to ship with Ubuntu 11.04. However it was delayed and instead shipped with Ubuntu 11.10 as the default system monospace font.
The font is fully Unicode
compliant and contains Latin A and B extended character sets, Greek polytonic
, and Cyrillic extended
. In addition, it has become the first native operating system font to include the Indian rupee sign
. The font has been designed primarily for use on screen displays, and its spacing and kerning is optimised for body copy sizes.
The Ubuntu Font Family has been included in the Google
web fonts, making it easily available for web typography
, and as of April 26 2011 it is included for use in Google Docs.
and open source license designed for the Ubuntu Font Family, which has used the license since version 0.68. The license is based on the SIL Open Font License
.
The Ubuntu Font Licence allows the fonts to be "used, studied, modified and redistributed freely" given that the license terms are met. The license is copyleft
and all derivative works must be distributed under the same license. Documents that use the fonts are not required to be licensed under the Ubuntu Font Licence.
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior...
TTF
TrueType
TrueType is an outline font standard originally developed by Apple Computer in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript...
based font, designed to be a modern humanist-style font by London-based type foundry
Type foundry
A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Originally, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and Monotype machines designed to be printed on letterpress printers...
Dalton Maag, with funding by Canonical Ltd. The font was under development for nearly nine months, with only a limited initial release through a beta program, until September 2010. It was then that it became the new default font of the Ubuntu operating system
Ubuntu (operating system)
Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...
in Ubuntu 10.10.
The Ubuntu Font Family is licensed under the Ubuntu Font Licence.
Design characteristics
The font was first introduced in October 2010 with the release of Ubuntu 10.10 in four versions Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic in English. With the release of Ubuntu 11.04 in April, 2011 additional fonts and expanded language coverage were introduced. The final development is intended to include a total of thirteen fonts consisting of:- Ubuntu in Regular, ItalicItalic typeIn typography, italic type is a cursive typeface based on a stylized form of calligraphic handwriting. Owing to the influence from calligraphy, such typefaces often slant slightly to the right. Different glyph shapes from roman type are also usually used—another influence from calligraphy...
, BoldEmphasis (typography)In typography, emphasis is the exaggeration of words in a text with a font in a different style from the rest of the text—to emphasize them.- Methods and use :...
and Bold Italic - Ubuntu Monospace in Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic
- Ubuntu Light in Regular, Italic
- Ubuntu Medium in Regular, Italic
- Ubuntu Condensed in Regular only
The monospace version, use in terminals, was initially planned to ship with Ubuntu 11.04. However it was delayed and instead shipped with Ubuntu 11.10 as the default system monospace font.
The font is fully Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
compliant and contains Latin A and B extended character sets, Greek polytonic
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...
, and Cyrillic extended
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
. In addition, it has become the first native operating system font to include the Indian rupee sign
Indian rupee sign
The Indian rupee sign is the currency sign used for the Indian rupee, the official currency of India. It is relatively new, the design only having been presented to the public by the Government of India on 15 July 2010, following its selection through an open competition among Indian residents...
. The font has been designed primarily for use on screen displays, and its spacing and kerning is optimised for body copy sizes.
Usage
The Ubuntu Font Family is the default font for the current and development releases of the Ubuntu operating system and is used for the Ubuntu project branding.The Ubuntu Font Family has been included in the Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
web fonts, making it easily available for web typography
Web typography
Web typography refers to the use of fonts on the World Wide Web. When HTML was first created, font faces and styles were controlled exclusively by the settings of each Web browser. There was no mechanism for individual Web pages to control font display until Netscape introduced the tag in 1995,...
, and as of April 26 2011 it is included for use in Google Docs.
Ubuntu Font Licence
The Ubuntu Font Licence is a freeFree software licence
A free software licence is a software licence which grants recipients rights to modify and redistribute the software, which would otherwise be prohibited by copyright law. A free software licence grants, to the recipients, freedoms in the form of permissions to modify or distribute copyrighted work...
and open source license designed for the Ubuntu Font Family, which has used the license since version 0.68. The license is based on the SIL Open Font License
SIL Open Font License
The SIL Open Font License is a free and open source license designed for fonts by SIL International for use with some of their Unicode fonts. The license is considered free by the Free Software Foundation, which states that a simple hello world program is enough to satisfy the license's requirement...
.
The Ubuntu Font Licence allows the fonts to be "used, studied, modified and redistributed freely" given that the license terms are met. The license is copyleft
Copyleft
Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work...
and all derivative works must be distributed under the same license. Documents that use the fonts are not required to be licensed under the Ubuntu Font Licence.
See also
- Ubuntu-TitleUbuntu-TitleUbuntu-Title is a hand-drawn, lower case OpenType font created by Andy Fitzsimon for use with the Ubuntu operating system and its derivatives. It is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License. Prior to the 10.04 release, the typeface was notably used in branding for the Ubuntu...
- Free software Unicode typefacesFree software Unicode typefacesA few projects exist to provide free and open-source Unicode typefaces, i.e. Unicode typefaces which are open-source and designed to contain glyphs of all Unicode characters. However there are also numerous projects aimed at providing only a certain script, such as the Arabeyes Arabic font...
- GPL font exceptionGPL font exceptionThe GPL font exception clause is an optional clause within the GNU General Public License permitting digital fonts shared with that license to be embedded within a digital document file without requiring the document itself to also be shared with GPL...
- SIL Open Font LicenseSIL Open Font LicenseThe SIL Open Font License is a free and open source license designed for fonts by SIL International for use with some of their Unicode fonts. The license is considered free by the Free Software Foundation, which states that a simple hello world program is enough to satisfy the license's requirement...