A Unicode font is a computer font that maps glyphs to code points defined in the Unicode Standard. The term has become archaic because the vast majority of modern computer fonts use Unicode mappings, even those fonts which only include glyphs for a single writing system, or even only support the basic Latin alphabet. The distinction is historic: before Unicode, when most computer systems used only eight-bit bytes, no more than 256 characters (or control codes) could be encoded. This meant that each character repertoire had to have its own codepoint assignments and thus a given codepoint could have multiple meanings. By assuring unique assignments, Unicode resolved this issue.
Fonts which support a wide range of Unicode scripts and Unicode symbols are sometimes referred to as "pan-Unicode fonts", although as the maximum number of glyphs that can be defined in a TrueType font is restricted to 65,535, it is not possible for a single TrueType font to provide individual glyphs for all defined Unicode characters (). This article lists some widely used Unicode fonts (those shipped with an operating system or produced by a well-known commercial font company) that support a comparatively large number and broad range of Unicode characters.
Background The Unicode standard does not specify or create any font (typeface), a collection of graphical shapes called glyphs, itself. Rather, it defines the abstract characters as a specific number (known as a code point) and also defines the required changes of shape depending on the context the glyph is used in (e.g., combining characters, precomposed characters and letter-diacritic combinations). The choice of font, which governs how the abstract characters in the Universal Coded Character Set (UCS) are converted into a bitmap or vector output that can then be viewed on a screen or printed, is left up to the user. If a font is chosen which does not contain a glyph for a code point used in the document, it typically displays a question mark, a box, or some other substitute character.
Computer fonts use various techniques to display characters or glyphs. A bitmap font contains a grid of dots known as pixels forming an image of each glyph in each face and size. Outline fonts (also known as vector fonts) use drawing instructions or mathematical formulae to describe each glyph. Stroke fonts use a series of specified lines (for the glyph's border) and additional information to define the profile, or size and shape of the line in a specific face and size, which together describe the appearance of the glyph.
Fonts also include embedded special orthographic rules to output certain combinations of letterforms (and alternative symbols for the same letter) be combined into special ligature forms (mixed characters). Operating systems, web browsers (user agent), and other software that extensively use typography, use a font to display text on the screen or print media, and can be programmed to use those embedded rules. Alternatively, they may use external script-shaping technologies (rendering technology or “smart font” engine), and they can also be programmed to use either a large Unicode font, or use multiple different fonts for different characters or languages.
No single "Unicode font" includes all the characters defined in the present revision of ISO 10646 (Unicode) standard, as more and more languages and characters are continually added to it, and common font formats cannot contain more than 65,535 glyphs (about half the number of characters encoded in Unicode). As a result, font developers and foundries incorporate new characters in newer versions or revisions of a font, or in separate auxiliary fonts intended specifically for particular languages.
UCS has over 1.1 million code points, but only the first 65,536 (the Plane 0: Basic Multilingual Plane, or BMP) had entered into common use before 2000. See the Unicode planes article for more information on other planes, including: Plane 1: Supplementary Multilingual Plane (SMP), Plane 2: Supplementary Ideographic Plane (SIP), Plane 14: Supplementary Special-purpose Plane (SSP), Plane 15 and 16: reserved for Private Use Areas (PUA).
The first Unicode fonts (with very large character sets and supporting many Unicode blocks) were Lucida Sans Unicode (released March 1993), Unihan font (1993), and Everson Mono (1995).
Issues There are typographical ambiguities in Unicode, so that some of the unified Han characters (seen in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) will be typographically different in different regions. For example, Unicode point is typographically different between simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese. This has implications for the idea that a single typeface can satisfy the needs of all locales.Ken Lunde, CJKV Information Processing, O'Reilly Inc, 1999. Page 128, "CJKV character form differences" The design of Unicode ensures that such differences do not create semantic ambiguity, but the use of incorrect forms is often considered visually awkward or aesthetically inappropriate to native readers of East Asian languages.
Application of Unicode fonts
Unicode is now the standard encoding for many new standards and protocols, and is built into the architecture of operating systems (Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS, and many versions of Unix and Linux), programming languages (Ada, Perl, Python, Java, Common LISP, APL), and libraries (IBM International Components for Unicode (ICU), along with the Pango, Graphite, Scribe, Uniscribe, and ATSUI rendering engines), font formats (TrueType and OpenType) and so on. Many other standards are also getting upgraded to be Unicode-compliant.
Utility software
Here is a selection of some of the utility software that can identify the characters present in a font file:
Character Map, applet included with Microsoft Windows Font Book, application included with Mac OS GNOME Character Map, application included with the GNOME desktop environment BabelMap, third-party software for Windows
List of Unicode fonts
Of the many Unicode fonts available, those listed below are the most commonly used worldwide on mainstream computing platforms.
+ List of Unicode Fonts Font Chars Glyphs Kernpairs(standard) Point (range) : hinting/smoothing behavior Version & date Filename,size Font family Font weight,style Fonttype Serifstyle License Creator / author (copyright) Notes Arial 3,988 3,988 909 v6.802012-05-11 arial.ttf(756 KB) Arial Medium (Normal), Regular OTF+TTO Normal Sans (2008) Monotype Corporation Arial Unicode MS 38,917 50,377 0 v1.01 sfnt rev 12002-11-18 ARIALUNI.TTF(22.1 MB) Arial Unicode MS Medium (Normal), Regular OTF+TTO Normal Sans Agfa Monotype Corporation.Monotype Corporation. Bitstream Cyberbit 32,961 29,934 935 v2.0 beta1998-03-22 Cyberbit.ttf(12.7 MB) Bitstream Cyberbit Medium (Normal), Roman TTF Cove Bitstream Inc. BitstreamCyberCJK 30,275 28,686 935 v2.0 beta1998-03-17 Cyberbit.ttf(12.4 MB) Bitstream CyberCJK Medium (Normal), Book, Roman TTF Cove Bitstream Inc. Brampton 1,916 1,979 0 v0.162011-09-22 Brampton.ttf(622 kB) Brampton TTF Slab serif OFL Christ Trek fonts Cardo 2,879 2,882 216 v0.099 sfnt rev 0.0989992010-05-23 Cardo99s.ttf(706 KB) Cardo Medium (Normal), Book, Regular TTF Cove OFL v1.1 David J. Perry Caslon Roman 3,683 3,686 0 v001.0002003-10-23 (3.70 MB) Caslon Roman TTF -like license George Williams Charis SIL 2,172 4,661 0 v4.106 sfnt rev 4.1062009-03-18 CharisSILR.ttf(1.57 MB) Charis SIL Medium (Normal), Regular TTF OFL SIL International Chryſanþi Unicode (Chrysanthi Unicode) 4,818 4,383 0 v3.12001-07-15 chrysuni.ttf(737 KB) Chrysanthi Unicode Medium (Normal), Regular TTF Dolgthrasir Mioethdrauci.Every Witch Way. ClearlyU 9,538 0 v1.92002-11-22 cu12.bdf(1.13 MB) ClearlyU Medium Bitmap Mark Leisher. Code2000 53,068 63,546 239 v1.171 sfnt rev 1.17092008-06-12 CODE2000.TTF(7.98 MB) Code2000 Medium (Normal), Book, Regular TTF Shareware(unrestricted) James Kass DejaVu Sans 5,467 5,762 2,637 v2.32 sfnt rev 2.319992010-08-22 DejaVuSans.ttf(667 KB) DejaVu Sans Medium (Normal), Book OTF+TTO Normal Sans Bitstream Vera license and public domain for additions Bitstream, Inc.Tavmjong Bah.public domain. Everson Mono 6,391 6,399 0 v5.203 sfnt rev v5.2032010-07-03 Everson Mono.ttf(1.91 MB) Everson Mono Medium (Normal), Regular TTF Shareware(unrestricted) Michael Everson Gentium 2,750+ 4,600+ extensive but clustered into overly generalized groups v7.0002025-6-01 Gentium_Regular.ttf(971.3 kB) Gentium Regular, Medium (Book) OpenType OFL J. Victor Gaultney. SIL International GNU FreeFont 7,203 8,995 36,302 v0412.2263 sfnt rev 412.226 (FreeSerif)2012-05-03 FreeSerif.ttf(3.2MiB) FreeSans.ttf(1.5MiB) FreeMono.ttf(572KiB) FreeSerif FreeSans FreeMono Medium (Normal) TTF Cove Free Software Foundation GNU Unifont (Unifont) 63,446 63,449 0 v15.0.06 2015-6-4(12MiB) (2.2MiB) unifont Medium (Normal) Bitmap, TTF,