Ubuntu font

Extended information

The Ubuntu Font Family are a set of matching new libre/open fonts in development during 2010-2011. The development is being funded by Canonical Ltd on behalf the wider Free Software community and the Ubuntu project. The technical font design work and implementation is being undertaken by Dalton Maag.

Both the final font Truetype/OpenType files and the design files used to produce the font family are distributed under an open licence and you are expressly encouraged to experiment, modify, share and improve.

The new Ubuntu Font Family was started to enable the personality of Ubuntu to be seen and felt in every menu, button and dialog. The typeface is sans-serif, uses OpenType features and is manually hinted for clarity on desktop and mobile computing screens.

The scope of the Ubuntu Font Family includes all the languages used by the various Ubuntu users around the world in tune with Ubuntu's philosophy which states that every user should be able to use their software in the language of their choice. So the Ubuntu Font Family project will be extended to cover many more written languages.

Ubuntu and Canonical are registered trademarks of Canonical Ltd.

Read more

The Ubuntu Font Family is very long-term endeavour, and the first time
that a professionally-designed font has been funded specifically with
the intent of being an on-going community expanded project:

http://font.ubuntu.com/

Development of the Ubuntu Font Family is undertaken on Launchpad:

http://launchpad.net/ubuntu-font-family/

and this is where milestones, bug management and releases are handled.

Contributions are welcomed. Your work will be used on millions of
computers every single day! Following the initial bootstrapping of
Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic and Hebrew expansion will be undertaken
by font designers from the font design and Ubuntu communities.

To ensure that the Ubuntu Font Family can be re-licensed to future
widely-used libre font licences, copyright assignment is being required:

https://launchpad.net/~uff-contributors

This is the FONTLOG file for the Ubuntu Font Family and attempts to follow
the recommendations at: http://scripts.sil.org/OFL-FAQ_web#43cecb44


Overview

The new Ubuntu Font Family was started to enable the personality of
Ubuntu to be seen and felt in every menu, button and dialog.
The typeface is sans-serif, uses OpenType features and is manually
hinted for clarity on desktop and mobile computing screens.

The scope of the Ubuntu Font Family includes all the languages used by
the various Ubuntu users around the world in tune with Ubuntu's
philosophy which states that every user should be able to use their
software in the language of their choice. So the Ubuntu Font Family
project will be extended to cover many more written languages.


History

The Ubuntu Font Family has been creating during 2010 and 2011. As of
September 2011 coverage is provided for Latin, Cyrillic and Greek across
Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold-Italic.


ChangeLog

2011-09-22 (Paul Sladen) Ubuntu Font Family version 0.80

[Vincent Connare/Dalton Maag]
* Wish for addition of a monospaced member to the family (LP: #640382)
* Mono: No hinting yet - Ubuntu Beta Mono font looks jagged in
Netbeans and terrible with ClearType (LP: #820493)
* Emacs: choosing normal monospace font in Emacs but gives bold-italic
(LP: #791076)
* PUA: ensure that Ubuntu Circle of Friends logo is full size: (LP: #853855)
+ U+E0FF becomes large size in proportionals, remains small width in
monospaces
+ U+F0FF becomes small size (proportionals only)
+ U+F200 is full ubuntu logomark (proportionals only)

[Paul Sladen]
* Monospace: Patch Family Name to be "Ubuntu Mono"
* Monospace: Patch U+EFFD version debugging glyph to be '0.8'

[Cody Boisclair]
* Monospace: Force .null HDMX advance to 500
* Monospace: Remap ASCII box-drawing characters (LP: #788757)

[Júlio Reis]
* Date corrections to 'FONTLOG' (LP: #836595)

2011-03-08 (Paul Sladen) Ubuntu Font Family version 0.71.2

* (Production) Adjust Medium WeightClass to 500 (Md, MdIt) (LP: #730912)

2011-03-07 (Paul Sladen) Ubuntu Font Family version 0.71.1

* (Design) Add Capitalised version of glyphs and kern. (Lt, LtIt,
Md, MdIt) DM (LP: #677446)
* (Design) Re-space and tighen Regular and Italic by amount specified
by Mark Shuttleworth (minus 4 FUnits). (Rg, It) (LP: #677149)
* (Design) Design: Latin (U+0192) made straight more like l/c f with
tail (LP: #670768)
* (Design) (U+01B3) should have hook on right, as the lowercase
(U+01B4) (LP: #681026)
* (Design) Tail of Light Italic germandbls, longs and lowercase 'f'
to match Italic/BoldItalic (LP: #623925)
* (Production) Update feature (Lt, LtIt, Md, MdIt). DM
(LP: #676538, #676539)
* (Production) Remove Bulgarian locl feature for Italics. (LP: #708578)
* (Production) Update Description information with new string:
"The Ubuntu Font Family are libre fonts funded by Canonical Ltd
on behalf of the Ubuntu project. The font design work and
technical implementation is being undertaken by Dalton Maag. The
typeface is sans-serif, uses OpenType features and is manually
hinted for clarity on desktop and mobile computing screens. The
scope of the Ubuntu Font Family includes all the languages used
by the various Ubuntu users around the world in tune with
Ubuntu's philosophy which states that every user should be able
to use their software in the language of their choice. The
project is ongoing, and we expect the family will be extended to
cover many written languages in the coming years."
(Rg, It, Bd, BdIt, Lt, LtIt, Md, MdIt) (LP: #690590)
* (Production) Pixel per em indicator added at U+F000 (Lt, LtIt, Md,
MdIt) (LP: #615787)
* (Production) Version number indicator added at U+EFFD (Lt, LtIt, Md,
MdIt) (LP: #640623)
* (Production) fstype bit set to 0 - Editable (Lt, LtIt, Md, MdIt)
(LP: #648406)
* (Production) Localisation of name table has been removed because
of problems with Mac OS/X interpretation of localisation. DM
(LP: #730785)
* (Hinting) Regular '?' dot non-circular (has incorrect control
value). (LP: #654336)
* (Hinting) Too much space after latin capital 'G' in 13pt
regular. Now reduced. (LP: #683437)
* (Hinting) Balance Indian Rupee at 18,19pt (LP: #662177)
* (Hinting) Make Regular '£' less ambiguous at 13-15 ppm (LP: #685562)
* (Hinting) Regular capital 'W' made symmetrical at 31 ppem (LP: #686168)

2010-12-14 (Paul Sladen) Ubuntu Font Family version 0.70.1

Packaging, rebuilt from '2010-12-08 UbuntuFontsSourceFiles_070.zip':
* (Midstream) Fstype bit != 0 (LP: #648406)
* (Midstream) Add unit test to validate fstype bits (LP: #648406)
* (Midstream) Add unit test to validate licence

2010-12-14 (Paul Sladen) Ubuntu Font Family version 0.70

Release notes 0.70:
* (Design) Add Capitalised version of glyphs and kern. (Rg, It, Bd,
BdIt) DM (LP: #676538, #677446)
* (Design) Give acute and grave a slight upright move to more match
the Hungarian double acute angle. (Rg, It, Bd, BdIt) (LP: #656647)
* (Design) Shift Bold Italic accent glyphs to be consistent with the
Italic. (BdIt only) DM (LP: #677449)
* (Design) Check spacing and kerning of dcaron, lcaron and
tcaron. (Rg, It, Bd, BdIt) (LP: #664722)
* (Design) Add positive kerning to () {} [] to open out the
combinations so they are less like a closed box. (Rg, It, Bd,
BdIt) (LP: #671228)
* (Design) Change design of acute.asc and check highest points (Bd
and BdIt only) DM
* (Production) Update feature. DM (LP: #676538, #676539)
* (Production) Remove Romanian locl feature. (Rg, It, Bd, BdIt)
(LP: #635615)
* (Production) Update Copyright information with new
strings. "Copyright 2010 Canonical Ltd. Licensed under the Ubuntu
Font Licence 1.0" Trademark string "Ubuntu and Canonical are
registered trademarks of Canonical Ltd." (Rg, It, Bd, BdIt) DM
(LP: #677450)
* (Design) Check aligning of hyphen, math signs em, en, check braces
and other brackets. 16/11 (LP: #676465)
* (Production) Pixel per em indicator added at U+F000 (Rg, It, Bd,
BdIt) (LP: #615787)
* (Production) Version number indicator added at U+EFFD (Rg, It, Bd,
BdIt) (LP: #640623)
* (Production) fstype bit set to 0 - Editable (Rg, It, Bd, BdIt)
(LP: #648406)

2010-10-05 (Paul Sladen) Ubuntu Font Family version 0.69

[Dalton Maag]
* Italic,
- Hinting on lowercase Italic l amended 19ppm (LP: #632451)
- Hinting on lowercase Italic u amended 12ppm (LP: #626376)

* Regular, Italic, Bold, BoldItalic
- New Rupee Sign added @ U+20B9 (LP: #645987)
- Ubuntu Roundel added @ U+E0FF (LP: #651606)

[Paul Sladen]
* All
- Removed "!ubu" GSUB.calt ligature for U+E0FF (LP: #651606)


Acknowledgements

If you make modifications be sure to add your name (N), email (E),
web-address (if you have one) (W) and description (D). This list is in
alphabetical order.

N: Ryan Abdullah
W: http://www.rayan.de/
D: Arabic calligraphy and design in collaboration with Dalton Maag
D: Arabic testing

N: Cody Boisclair
D: Monospace low-level debugging and patching ('fixboxdrawing-ft.py')

N: Amélie Bonet
W: http://ameliebonet.com/
D: Type design with Dalton Maag, particularly Ubuntu Mono and Ubuntu Condensed

N: Jason Campbell
W: http://www.campbellgraphics.com/design/fonts.shtml
D: Monospace hinting (first phase) at Dalton Maag

N: Pilar Cano
W: http://www.pilarcano.com/
D: Hebrew realisation with Dalton Maag

N: Fernando Caro
D: Type design with Dalton Maag, particularly Ubuntu Condensed

N: Ron Carpenter
W: http://www.daltonmaag.com/
D: Type design with Dalton Maag
D: Arabic realisation in collaboration with Ryan Abdullah

N: Vincent Connare
W: http://www.connare.com/
D: Type design, and engineering with Dalton Maag
D: Monospace hinting (second phase) at Dalton Maag

N: Dave Crossland
E: [email protected]
W: http://understandingfonts.com/
D: Documentation and libre licensing guidance
D: Google Webfont integration at Google

N: Steve Edwards
W: http://www.madebymake.com/
D: font.ubuntu.com revamp implementation with Canonical Web Team

N: Iain Farrell
W: http://www.flickr.com/photos/iain
D: Ubuntu Font Family delivery for the Ubuntu UX team at Canonical

N: Shiraaz Gabru
W: http://www.daltonmaag.com/
D: Ubuntu Font Family project management at Dalton Maag

N: Marcus Haslam
W: http://design.canonical.com/author/marcus-haslam/
D: Creative inspiration

N: Ben Laenen
D: Inspiration behind the pixels-per-em (PPEM) readout debugging glyph at U+F000
(for this font the concept was re-implemented from scratch by Dalton-Maag)

N: Bruno Maag
W: http://www.daltonmaag.com/
D: Stylistic direction of the Ubuntu Font Family, as head of Dalton Maag

N: Ivanka Majic
W: http://www.ivankamajic.com/
D: Guiding the UX team and Cyrillic feedback

N: David Marshall
W: http://www.daltonmaag.com/
D: Technical guidance and administration at Dalton Maag

N: Malcolm Wooden
W: http://www.daltonmaag.com/
D: Font Engineering at Dalton Maag

N: Lukas Paltram
W: http://www.daltonmaag.com/
D: Type design with Dalton Maag

N: Júlio Reis
D: Date fixes to the documentation

N: Rodrigo Rivas
D: Indian Rupee Sign glyph

N: Mark Shuttleworth
E: [email protected]
W: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/
D: Executive quality-control and funding

N: Paul Sladen
E: [email protected]
W: http://www.paul.sladen.org/
D: Bug triaging, packaging at Ubuntu and Canonical

N: Nicolas Spalinger
W: http://planet.open-fonts.org
D: Continuous guidance on libre/open font licensing, best practises in source
tree layout, release and packaging (pkg-fonts Debian team)

N: Kenneth Wimer
D: Initial PPA packaging

* Canonical Ltd is the primary commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu and
Kubuntu operating systems
* Dalton Maag are a custom type foundry headed by Bruno Maag

For further documentation, information on contributors, source code
downloads and those involved with the Ubuntu Font Family, visit:

http://font.ubuntu.com/

Ubuntu Font Family Licensing FAQ

Stylistic Foundations

The Ubuntu Font Family is the first time that a libre typeface has been
designed professionally and explicitly with the intent of developing a
public and long-term community-based development process.

When developing an open project, it is generally necessary to have firm
foundations: a font needs to maintain harmony within itself even across
many type designers and writing systems. For the [1]Ubuntu Font Family,
the process has been guided with the type foundry Dalton Maag setting
the project up with firm stylistic foundation covering several
left-to-right scripts: Latin, Greek and Cyrillic; and right-to-left
scripts: Arabic and Hebrew (due in 2011).

With this starting point the community will, under the supervision of
[2]Canonical and [3]Dalton Maag, be able to build on the existing font
sources to expand their character coverage. Ultimately everybody will
be able to use the Ubuntu Font Family in their own written languages
across the whole of Unicode (and this will take some time!).

Licensing

The licence chosen by any free software project is one of the
foundational decisions that sets out how derivatives and contributions
can occur, and in turn what kind of community will form around the
project.

Using a licence that is compatible with other popular licences is a
powerful constraint because of the [4]network effects: the freedom to
share improvements between projects allows free software to reach
high-quality over time. Licence-proliferation leads to many
incompatible licences, undermining the network effect, the freedom to
share and ultimately making the libre movement that Ubuntu is a part of
less effective. For all kinds of software, writing a new licence is not
to be taken lightly and is a choice that needs to be thoroughly
justified if this path is taken.

Today it is not clear to Canonical what the best licence for a font
project like the Ubuntu Font Family is: one that starts life designed
by professionals and continues with the full range of community
development, from highly commercial work in new directions to curious
beginners' experimental contributions. The fast and steady pace of the
Ubuntu release cycle means that an interim libre licence has been
necessary to enable the consideration of the font family as part of
Ubuntu 10.10 operating system release.

Before taking any decision on licensing, Canonical as sponsor and
backer of the project has reviewed the many existing licenses used for
libre/open fonts and engaged the stewards of the most popular licenses
in detailed discussions. The current interim licence is the first step
in progressing the state-of-the-art in licensing for libre/open font
development.

The public discussion must now involve everyone in the (comparatively
new) area of the libre/open font community; including font users,
software freedom advocates, open source supporters and existing libre
font developers. Most importantly, the minds and wishes of professional
type designers considering entering the free software business
community must be taken on board.

Conversations and discussion has taken place, privately, with
individuals from the following groups (generally speaking personally on
behalf of themselves, rather than their affiliations):
* [5]SIL International
* [6]Open Font Library
* [7]Software Freedom Law Center
* [8]Google Font API

Document embedding

One issue highlighted early on in the survey of existing font licences
is that of document embedding. Almost all font licences, both free and
unfree, permit embedding a font into a document to a certain degree.
Embedding a font with other works that make up a document creates a
"combined work" and copyleft would normally require the whole document
to be distributed under the terms of the font licence. As beautiful as
the font might be, such a licence makes a font too restrictive for
useful general purpose digital publishing.

The situation is not entirely unique to fonts and is encountered also
with tools such as GNU Bison: a vanilla GNU GPL licence would require
anything generated with Bison to be made available under the terms of
the GPL as well. To avoid this, Bison is [9]published with an
additional permission to the GPL which allows the output of Bison to be
made available under any licence.

The conflict between licensing of fonts and licensing of documents, is
addressed in two popular libre font licences, the SIL OFL and GNU GPL:
* [10]SIL Open Font Licence: When OFL fonts are embedded in a
document, the OFL's terms do not apply to that document. (See
[11]OFL-FAQ for details.
* [12]GPL Font Exception: The situation is resolved by granting an
additional permission to allow documents to not be covered by the
GPL. (The exception is being reviewed).

The Ubuntu Font Family must also resolve this conflict, ensuring that
if the font is embedded and then extracted it is once again clearly
under the terms of its libre licence.

Long-term licensing

Those individuals involved, especially from Ubuntu and Canonical, are
interested in finding a long-term libre licence that finds broad favour
across the whole libre/open font community. The deliberation during the
past months has been on how to licence the Ubuntu Font Family in the
short-term, while knowingly encouraging everyone to pursue a long-term
goal.
* [13]Copyright assignment will be required so that the Ubuntu Font
Family's licensing can be progressively expanded to one (or more)
licences, as best practice continues to evolve within the
libre/open font community.
* Canonical will support and fund legal work on libre font licensing.
It is recognised that the cost and time commitments required are
likely to be significant. We invite other capable parties to join
in supporting this activity.

The GPL version 3 (GPLv3) will be used for Ubuntu Font Family build
scripts and the CC-BY-SA for associated documentation and non-font
content: all items which do not end up embedded in general works and
documents.

Ubuntu Font Licence

For the short-term only, the initial licence is the [14]Ubuntu Font
License (UFL). This is loosely inspired from the work on the SIL
OFL 1.1, and seeks to clarify the issues that arose during discussions
and legal review, from the perspective of the backers, Canonical Ltd.
Those already using established licensing models such as the GPL, OFL
or Creative Commons licensing should have no worries about continuing
to use them. The Ubuntu Font Licence (UFL) and the SIL Open Font
Licence (SIL OFL) are not identical and should not be confused with
each other. Please read the terms precisely. The UFL is only intended
as an interim license, and the overriding aim is to support the
creation of a more suitable and generic libre font licence. As soon as
such a licence is developed, the Ubuntu Font Family will migrate to
it—made possible by copyright assignment in the interium. Between the
OFL 1.1, and the UFL 1.0, the following changes are made to produce the
Ubuntu Font Licence:
* Clarification:

1. Document embedding (see [15]embedding section above).
2. Apply at point of distribution, instead of receipt
3. Author vs. copyright holder disambiguation (type designers are
authors, with the copyright holder normally being the funder)
4. Define "Propagate" (for internationalisation, similar to the GPLv3)
5. Define "Substantially Changed"
6. Trademarks are explicitly not transferred
7. Refine renaming requirement

Streamlining:
8. Remove "not to be sold separately" clause
9. Remove "Reserved Font Name(s)" declaration

A visual demonstration of how these points were implemented can be
found in the accompanying coloured diff between SIL OFL 1.1 and the
Ubuntu Font Licence 1.0: [16]ofl-1.1-ufl-1.0.diff.html

References

1. http://font.ubuntu.com/
2. http://www.canonical.com/
3. http://www.daltonmaag.com/
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
5. http://scripts.sil.org/
6. http://openfontlibrary.org/
7. http://www.softwarefreedom.org/
8. http://code.google.com/webfonts
9. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#CanIUseGPLToolsForNF
10. http://scripts.sil.org/OFL_web
11. http://scripts.sil.org/OFL-FAQ_web
12. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FontException
13. https://launchpad.net/~uff-contributors
14. http://font.ubuntu.com/ufl/ubuntu-font-licence-1.0.txt
15. http://font.ubuntu.com/ufl/FAQ.html#embedding
16. http://font.ubuntu.com/ufl/ofl-1.1-ufl-1.0.diff.html

-------------------------------
UBUNTU FONT LICENCE Version 1.0
-------------------------------

PREAMBLE
This licence allows the licensed fonts to be used, studied, modified and
redistributed freely. The fonts, including any derivative works, can be
bundled, embedded, and redistributed provided the terms of this licence
are met. The fonts and derivatives, however, cannot be released under
any other licence. The requirement for fonts to remain under this
licence does not require any document created using the fonts or their
derivatives to be published under this licence, as long as the primary
purpose of the document is not to be a vehicle for the distribution of
the fonts.

DEFINITIONS
"Font Software" refers to the set of files released by the Copyright
Holder(s) under this licence and clearly marked as such. This may
include source files, build scripts and documentation.

"Original Version" refers to the collection of Font Software components
as received under this licence.

"Modified Version" refers to any derivative made by adding to, deleting,
or substituting -- in part or in whole -- any of the components of the
Original Version, by changing formats or by porting the Font Software to
a new environment.

"Copyright Holder(s)" refers to all individuals and companies who have a
copyright ownership of the Font Software.

"Substantially Changed" refers to Modified Versions which can be easily
identified as dissimilar to the Font Software by users of the Font
Software comparing the Original Version with the Modified Version.

To "Propagate" a work means to do anything with it that, without
permission, would make you directly or secondarily liable for
infringement under applicable copyright law, except executing it on a
computer or modifying a private copy. Propagation includes copying,
distribution (with or without modification and with or without charging
a redistribution fee), making available to the public, and in some
countries other activities as well.

PERMISSION & CONDITIONS
This licence does not grant any rights under trademark law and all such
rights are reserved.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
copy of the Font Software, to propagate the Font Software, subject to
the below conditions:

1) Each copy of the Font Software must contain the above copyright
notice and this licence. These can be included either as stand-alone
text files, human-readable headers or in the appropriate machine-
readable metadata fields within text or binary files as long as those
fields can be easily viewed by the user.

2) The font name complies with the following:
(a) The Original Version must retain its name, unmodified.
(b) Modified Versions which are Substantially Changed must be renamed to
avoid use of the name of the Original Version or similar names entirely.
(c) Modified Versions which are not Substantially Changed must be
renamed to both (i) retain the name of the Original Version and (ii) add
additional naming elements to distinguish the Modified Version from the
Original Version. The name of such Modified Versions must be the name of
the Original Version, with "derivative X" where X represents the name of
the new work, appended to that name.

3) The name(s) of the Copyright Holder(s) and any contributor to the
Font Software shall not be used to promote, endorse or advertise any
Modified Version, except (i) as required by this licence, (ii) to
acknowledge the contribution(s) of the Copyright Holder(s) or (iii) with
their explicit written permission.

4) The Font Software, modified or unmodified, in part or in whole, must
be distributed entirely under this licence, and must not be distributed
under any other licence. The requirement for fonts to remain under this
licence does not affect any document created using the Font Software,
except any version of the Font Software extracted from a document
created using the Font Software may only be distributed under this
licence.

TERMINATION
This licence becomes null and void if any of the above conditions are
not met.

DISCLAIMER
THE FONT SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF
COPYRIGHT, PATENT, TRADEMARK, OR OTHER RIGHT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
COPYRIGHT HOLDER BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
FROM, OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE FONT SOFTWARE OR FROM OTHER
DEALINGS IN THE FONT SOFTWARE.

----------------------
Ubuntu Font Family
======================

The Ubuntu Font Family are a set of matching new libre/open fonts in
development during 2010--2011. The development is being funded by
Canonical Ltd on behalf the wider Free Software community and the
Ubuntu project. The technical font design work and implementation is
being undertaken by Dalton Maag.

Both the final font Truetype/OpenType files and the design files used
to produce the font family are distributed under an open licence and
you are expressly encouraged to experiment, modify, share and improve.

http://font.ubuntu.com/

Ubuntu and Canonical are registered trademarks of Canonical Ltd.

The licence accompanying these works does not grant any rights
under trademark law and all such rights are reserved.

Copyright 2010,2011 Canonical Ltd.

This Font Software is licensed under the Ubuntu Font Licence, Version
1.0. https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-font-licence