GNU Unifont
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The GNU Unifont by Roman Czyborra is a free bitmap font that covers the Unicode Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP), using an intermediate bitmapped font format. It is present in most free operating systems and windowing systems such as Linux, XFree86 or the X.Org Server. The font is released under the GNU General Public License.
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[edit] History
In 1998, Roman Czyborra observed that no font existed that covered the entire Unicode Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP). The BMP covers the first 65,536 code points of Unicode and includes most modern scripts. He began an effort to provide a free bitmapped font, to which others could contribute, to produce a complete BMP font. His goal was to have a display device be able to show some meaningful representation of each glyph in the BMP.
To this end, he developed a simple intermediate hexadecimal bitmap format with tools to convert to and from an ASCII representation of the bitmap. He also developed a utility to convert files in this hexadecimal format to Adobe Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format (BDF) files for use with X Window on Unix systems.
[edit] Status
The Unicode Basic Multilingual Plane covers 216 = 65,536 code points. Of this number, 4096 are reserved for special use as surrogate pairs and 6,400 are reserved for private use. This leaves approximately 55,000 code points to which glyphs can be assigned. Some of these code points are special values that do not have an assigned glyph, but most do have assigned glyphs.
Of the approximately 55,000 code points that can have assigned glyphs, the GNU Unifont contains about 41,000 glyphs as of December 2007. This leaves 14,000 glyphs to be added for complete BMP coverage. The existing glyphs cover all code points for ASCII, Latin-1, Latin A and B extensions, Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian, and Hebrew. Most Arabic glyphs are defined. Most Chinese-Japanese-Korean (CJK) glyphs are defined, including Hangul.
The following table shows font coverage as a percentage of each script that is complete as of the end of 2007. Scripts that are less than 100% complete can be augmented by any contributor.
| Covered | Range | Script |
|---|---|---|
| 100.0% | U+0000..U+007F | C0 Controls and Basic Latin |
| 100.0% | U+0080..U+00FF | C1 Controls and Latin-1 Supplement |
| 100.0% | U+0100..U+017F | Latin Extended-A |
| 100.0% | U+0180..U+024F | Latin Extended-B |
| 100.0% | U+0250..U+02AF | IPA Extensions |
| 100.0% | U+02B0..U+02FF | Spacing Modifier Letters |
| 100.0% | U+0300..U+036F | Combining Diacritical Marks |
| 100.0% | U+0370..U+03FF | Greek and Coptic |
| 100.0% | U+0400..U+04FF | Cyrillic |
| 100.0% | U+0500..U+052F | Cyrillic Supplement |
| 100.0% | U+0530..U+058F | Armenian |
| 100.0% | U+0590..U+05FF | Hebrew |
| 79.3% | U+0600..U+06FF | Arabic |
| 3.8% | U+0700..U+074F | Syriac |
| 37.5% | U+0750..U+077F | Arabic Supplement |
| 21.9% | U+0780..U+07BF | Thaana |
| 7.8% | U+07C0..U+07FF | N'Ko |
| 100.0% | U+0800..U+08FF | Unassigned |
| 95.3% | U+0900..U+097F | Devanagari |
| 96.9% | U+0980..U+09FF | Bengali |
| 39.1% | U+0A00..U+0A7F | Gurmukhi |
| 35.2% | U+0A80..U+0AFF | Gujarati |
| 36.7% | U+0B00..U+0B7F | Oriya |
| 44.5% | U+0B80..U+0BFF | Tamil |
| 37.5% | U+0C00..U+0C7F | Telugu |
| 32.8% | U+0C80..U+0CFF | Kannada |
| 39.1% | U+0D00..U+0D7F | Malayalam |
| 37.5% | U+0D80..U+0DFF | Sinhala |
| 100.0% | U+0E00..U+0E7F | Thai |
| 100.0% | U+0E80..U+0EFF | Lao |
| 82.0% | U+0F00..U+0FFF | Tibetan |
| 51.2% | U+1000..U+109F | Myanmar |
| 55.2% | U+10A0..U+10FF | Georgian |
| 32.4% | U+1100..U+11FF | Hangul Jamo |
| 97.9% | U+1200..U+137F | Ethiopic |
| 18.8% | U+1380..U+139F | Ethiopic Supplement |
| 100.0% | U+13A0..U+13FF | Cherokee |
| 75.5% | U+1400..U+167F | Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics |
| 100.0% | U+1680..U+169F | Ogham |
| 100.0% | U+16A0..U+16FF | Runic |
| 37.5% | U+1700..U+171F | Tagalog |
| 28.1% | U+1720..U+173F | Hanunoo |
| 37.5% | U+1740..U+175F | Buhid |
| 43.8% | U+1760..U+177F | Tagbanwa |
| 10.9% | U+1780..U+17FF | Khmer |
| 11.9% | U+1800..U+18AF | Mongolian |
| 100.0% | U+18B0..U+18FF | Unassigned |
| 17.5% | U+1900..U+194F | Limbu |
| 27.1% | U+1950..U+197F | Tai Le |
| 16.7% | U+1980..U+19DF | New Tai Lue |
| 0.0% | U+19E0..U+19FF | Khmer Symbols |
| 6.2% | U+1A00..U+1A1F | Buginese |
| 0.0% | U+1A20..U+1AFF | Unassigned |
| 5.5% | U+1B00..U+1B7F | Balinese |
| 100.0% | U+1B80..U+1CFF | Unassigned |
| 0.0% | U+1D00..U+1D7F | Phonetic Extensions |
| 0.0% | U+1D80..U+1DBF | Phonetic Extensions Supplement |
| 79.7% | U+1DC0..U+1DFF | Combining Diacritical Marks Supplement |
| 100.0% | U+1E00..U+1EFF | Latin Extended Additional |
| 100.0% | U+1F00..U+1FFF | Greek Extended |
| 80.4% | U+2000..U+206F | General Punctuation |
| 87.5% | U+2070..U+209F | Superscripts and Subscripts |
| 87.5% | U+20A0..U+20CF | Currency Symbols |
| 75.0% | U+20D0..U+20FF | Combining Diacritical Marks for Symbols |
| 75.0% | U+2100..U+214F | Letterlike Symbols |
| 98.4% | U+2150..U+218F | Number Forms |
| 89.3% | U+2190..U+21FF | Arrows |
| 94.5% | U+2200..U+22FF | Mathematical Operators |
| 57.4% | U+2300..U+23FF | Miscellaneous Technical |
| 100.0% | U+2400..U+243F | Control Pictures |
| 100.0% | U+2440..U+245F | Optical Character Recognition |
| 86.9% | U+2460..U+24FF | Enclosed Alphanumerics |
| 100.0% | U+2500..U+257F | Box Drawing |
| 68.8% | U+2580..U+259F | Block Elements |
| 91.7% | U+25A0..U+25FF | Geometric Shapes |
| 73.4% | U+2600..U+26FF | Miscellaneous Symbols |
| 92.7% | U+2700..U+27BF | Dingbats |
| 18.8% | U+27C0..U+27EF | Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols - A |
| 0.0% | U+27F0..U+27FF | Supplemental Arrows - A |
| 100.0% | U+2800..U+28FF | Braille Patterns |
| 0.0% | U+2900..U+297F | Supplemental Arrows - B |
| 0.0% | U+2980..U+29FF | Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols - B |
| 0.0% | U+2A00..U+2AFF | Supplemental Mathematical Operators |
| 87.9% | U+2B00..U+2BFF | Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows |
| 2.1% | U+2C00..U+2C5F | Glagolithic |
| 46.9% | U+2C60..U+2C7F | Latin Extended C |
| 10.9% | U+2C80..U+2CFF | Coptic |
| 20.8% | U+2D00..U+2D2F | Georgian Supplement |
| 31.2% | U+2D30..U+2D7F | Tifinagh |
| 17.7% | U+2D80..U+2DDF | Ethiopic Extended |
| 100.0% | U+2DE0..U+2DFF | Unassigned |
| 79.7% | U+2E00..U+2E7F | Supplemental Punctuation |
| 10.2% | U+2E80..U+2EFF | CJK Radicals Supplement |
| 4.5% | U+2F00..U+2FDF | Kangxi Radicals |
| 100.0% | U+2FE0..U+2FEF | Unassigned |
| 100.0% | U+2FF0..U+2FFF | Ideographic Description Characters |
| 62.5% | U+3000..U+303F | CJK Symbols and Punctuation |
| 94.8% | U+3040..U+309F | Hiragana |
| 97.9% | U+30A0..U+30FF | Katakana |
| 93.8% | U+3100..U+312F | Bopomofo |
| 100.0% | U+3130..U+318F | Hangul Compatibility Jamo |
| 0.0% | U+3190..U+319F | Kanbun |
| 25.0% | U+31A0..U+31BF | Bopomofo Extended |
| 66.7% | U+31C0..U+31EF | CJK Strokes |
| 0.0% | U+31F0..U+31FF | Katakana Phonetic Extensions |
| 32.4% | U+3200..U+32FF | Enclosed CJK Letters and Months |
| 39.1% | U+3300..U+33FF | CJK Compatibility |
| 0.2% | U+3400..U+4DBF | CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A |
| 0.0% | U+4DC0..U+4DFF | Yijing Hexagram Symbols |
| 86.9% | U+4E00..U+9FBF | CJK Unified Ideographs |
| 100.0% | U+9FC0..U+9FFF | Unassigned |
| 0.3% | U+A000..U+A48F | Yi Syllables |
| 14.1% | U+A490..U+A4CF | Yi Radicals |
| 100.0% | U+A4D0..U+A6FF | Unassigned |
| 15.6% | U+A700..U+A71F | Modifier Tone Letters |
| 99.1% | U+A720..U+A7FF | Latin Extended - D |
| 8.3% | U+A800..U+A82F | Syloti Nagri |
| 100.0% | U+A830..U+A83F | Unassigned |
| 12.5% | U+A840..U+A87F | Phags-pa |
| 100.0% | U+A880..U+ABFF | Unassigned |
| 100.0% | U+AC00..U+D7AF | Hangul Syllables |
| 0.0% | U+D7B0..U+D7FF | Unassigned |
| 0.0% | U+D800..U+DFFF | Surrogate Pairs - Not Used |
| 100.0% | U+E000..U+F8FF | Private Use Area |
| 61.5% | U+F900..U+FAFF | CJK Compatibility Ideographs |
| 98.8% | U+FB00..U+FB4F | Alphabetic Presentation Forms |
| 36.8% | U+FB50..U+FDFF | Arabic Presentation Forms - A |
| 0.0% | U+FE00..U+FE0F | Variation Selectors |
| 37.5% | U+FE10..U+FE1F | Vertical Forms |
| 100.0% | U+FE20..U+FE2F | Combining Half Marks |
| 87.5% | U+FE30..U+FE4F | CJK Compatibility Forms |
| 100.0% | U+FE50..U+FE6F | Small Form Variants |
| 99.3% | U+FE70..U+FEFF | Arabic Presentation Forms - B |
| 77.1% | U+FF00..U+FFEF | Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms |
| 68.8% | U+FFF0..U+FFFF | Specials |
[edit] unifont.hex Font Format
The GNU Unifont .hex format defines its glyphs as either 8 or 16 pixels in width by 16 pixels in height. Most Western script glyphs can be defined as 8 pixels wide, while other glyphs (notably the Chinese-Japanese-Korean, or CJK set) are typically defined as 16 pixels wide.
The unifont.hex file contains one line for each glyph. Each line consists of a four digit Unicode hexadecimal code point, a colon, and the bitmap string. The bit string is 32 hexadecimal digits for an 8 pixel wide glyph or 64 hexadecimal digits for a 16 pixel wide glyph.
A '1' bit in the bit string corresponds to an 'on' pixel. Pixels bits are stored top to bottom, left to right.
The font is then converted into a BDF file for use on X Window.
[edit] Example
This is an example font containing one glyph, for ASCII capital 'A'.
0041:0000000018242442427E424242420000
The first number is the hexadecimal Unicode code point, with range 0000 through FFFF. Hexadecimal 0041 is decimal 65, the code point for the letter 'A'. The colon separates the code point from the bitmap. In this example, the glyph is 8 pixels wide, so the bit string is 32 hexadecimal digits long.
The bit string begins with 8 zeroes, so the top 4 rows will be empty (2 hexadecimal digits per 8 bit byte, with 8 bits per row for an 8 pixel-wide glyph). The bit string also ends with 4 zeroes, so the bottom 2 rows will be empty. It is implicit from this that the default font descender is 2 rows below the baseline, and the capital height is 10 rows above the baseline. This is the case in the GNU Unifont with Latin glyphs.
The hexdraw Perl script produces the following output from the one line glyph definition above:
0041: --------
--------
--------
--------
---##---
--#--#--
--#--#--
-#----#-
-#----#-
-######-
-#----#-
-#----#-
-#----#-
-#----#-
--------
--------
This can be edited in a text editor, then converted back into a hex string with the same utility. The goal was to create an intermediate format that would facilitate adding new glyphs.
[edit] References
- The Unicode Consortium: The Unicode 5.0 Standard. 5th, Addison Wesley 2007; ISBN 0-321-48091-0.
