Opensource Typefaces
Clones of the 35 PostScript Fonts
The The Libration fonts are width-compatible with Times, Helvetica, and Courier.
The The URW Fonts include width-compatible clones of all 35 fonts found in most level 2 PostScript printers.
Bitstream Vera and Decendants
Bitstream Vera has 300 glyphs covering the Latin alphabet. Families in the Bitstream version collection include:
- Bitstream Vera Sans (4 variants)
- Bitstream Vera Sans Mono (4 variants)
- Bitstream Vera Serif (regular and bold)
An expanded version known as DejaVu which has almost 3500 glyphs and additional styles.
Other Noteworthy Opensource Typefaces
- Hershey Fonts Early vector font widely used in computer graphics. Includes Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Japanese letters.
- Bitstream Charter A simplified serif typeface designed in 1987 for good performance and high legibility on 300dpi laser printers. An expanded version is known as Charis SIL.
- Utopia A serif typeface a version of which was released by Adobe as opensource software in 1989.
- Computer Modern A set of typefaces created by Donald Knuth. Widely used with the TeX typesetting system to typeset mathematical papers.
- Gentium An award-winning typeface released in 2007 which in the Plus version has over 5500 symbols. Official Site
- Ubuntu A sans-serif typeface used in the user interface of the Ubuntu Linux operating system. Available on Google fonts for use as a web font.
- Adobe’s Source Family A set of serif, sans-serif, and monospace fonts with good alphabet coverage. The serif and sans-serif versions are also available in expanded versions with CJK coverage.
- Linux Libertine A serif typeface inspired by 19th century book type. Support sophisticated typesetting features such as small capitals, ligatures, kerning, and true fractions. There is a complimentary sans-serif typeface called Linux Biolinum. Official Site of the Libertine fonts.
- Droid Fonts A set of serif, sans-serif, and monospace fonts originally developed for the Android mobile platform and first released in 2007.
- Open Sans Popular sans-serif typeface for web pages and mobile apps. Highly legible on screens and at small sizes. Similar to Droid Sans, but with an italic variant and wider characters.
- Roboto A sans-serif typeface family used as the default system font in Android since version 4.0 in 2011. Also used on many Google web sites including YouTube and Google Maps. Provided in six weights. Slab-serif and monospaced variants are now available.
- Noto Fonts A typeface family (serif, sans-serif, mono) consisting of over a hundred individual fonts. It is intended to cover all of the script in the Unicode standard. It is used as a fallback font on Android devices. It is has serif and sans-serif variants. The Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic characters are derived from the Droid fonts. Noto CJK fonts are derived from the Adobe Source fonts.
Online Opensource Font Catelogs
- Opensource Typefaces Category page at Wikipedia
- Google Fonts A site from which you can download them for use on your computer or uploading to your web server or include them in your web pages directly form the Google server. (Google has promised not to use the server logs for visitor tracking.) Has almost 1000 font families.
- Font Library Online library of opensource and freeware fonts in a searchable catelog. You can either download them for use on your computer or uploading to your web server or include them in web pages directly from the Font Library server. (They will be delivered without subsetting, in TTF format.) Search function is very basic. For example, there is no obvious way to select serif cyrillic fonts.
- Fontsquirrel A site where you can choose fonts and download them for use on your own web server. Click on the sample of the one you want and go to the Webfont Kit tab to get the font in Webfont format for uploading to your server. Note thought that the style files provided require tweaking as they do not set up the weight and style properly.
