Font Tools and Resources

Font Related Links

 * Artifex Ghostscript True Type Fonts

A page with links to True Type and Type1 versions of the Ghostscript fonts, released for use by Artifex (the commercial developer of Ghostscript) with AFPL Ghostscript. This collection includes all the URW fonts commonly shipped with most Linux distros, but also includes some additional font families, including URW Classico and a Garamond. Recommended to have for cross-platform purposes as well.


 * Cardo Font for Scholars

A font with extensive coverage of Greek and Hebrew. Free for non-commercial use, but restricted otherwise.


 * Corefonts tool for MS Web Font Collection

This site has the tools to download the MS web font collection. These fonts are also very reliable printing fonts if setup properly on your workstation.


 * Dafont : download free and shareware fonts

This site contains a large choice of TT fonts to download, classified by theme. The quality is different from font to font but some of them are quite nice. Although lots of them are free, some have a restricted use policy, so check the license of each font before using it.


 * DejaVu Fonts

DejaVu fonts are Bitstream Vera fonts (http://www.bitstream.com/) with additional characters from Latin Extended-A set (Dcaron, dcaron, Ecaron, ecaron, Ncaron, ncaron, Rcaron, rcaron, Tcaron, tcaron, Uring, uring). DejaVu fonts are based on Bitstream Vera fonts version 1.10.


 * Fonts for Scholars

A listing of downloadable fonts and much info Latin, Germanic Languages,Greek, Hebrew and Linguistics, especially geared towards scholars and those needing them for scholarly works, Includes info on Cardo, a Unicode font of interest to classicists, Biblical scholars, medievalists, and linguists.


 * Font Sampler Script for Scribus

This has some additional info, FAQ's and a roadmap for the Font Sampler which is included in Scribus. The font sampler script written by Steve Callcott is an excellent example of how powerful the scripting capabilities are in Scribus.


 * Freetype.org

Freetype libraries. Freetype is currently at version 2.1.10, but as of version 2.1.2, there are a number of changes in the base code to prepare for the development of Freetype v2.2 and v3.0. Freetype is now included with XFree86 4.2+.


 * Gallery of Unicode Fonts

A very comprehensive listing of various fonts which support Unicode ranges with download links.


 * Gentium Unicode Font

This is a freely available, well designed Unicode font created as a part of a research project at the University of Reading. The Gentium font works well in Scribus and has substantial non-Latin coverage, as well as ligatures, extended symbol coverage and Diacritics for many European languages. Many other links and info on Unicode.


 * Identifont

A toolbox to find a font based on its characteristics or to view a font if you know its name.


 * John Stracke's Fonts

This is a small but very well done collection of interesting old style fonts, including one called Isabella, which emulates 14th century handrwriting.


 * Junicode - A high quality Unicode font for Old/Medieval English

This is a free GPL'd font specially designed for medievalists. However, it also can be used for decorative and older manuscript texts.


 * Lido - high quality freeware font

This font family is freeware. STF provides it free of charge for non-commercial use in households, in education, for private scholars, et al. The Lido STF fonts are freeware, but not a public domain. This means that it continues to be protected by all copyrights.


 * MG Open Greek Fonts

The MgOpen typefaces are freely available high quality Open Type fonts and contain glyphs for viewing texts in Greek (written in the monotoniko system). Originally commercially developed, then licensed freely.


 * Opcion - A Java Based Font Viewer

Opcion is a GPL Java Font Previewer - It it is cross platform and can preview uninstalled fonts. Just browse to the directory and it automatically can preview a font.


 * FontForge

An outline font editor that lets you create your own postscript, truetype, opentype, cid-keyed, multi-master, cff, svg and bitmap (bdf, FON, NFNT) fonts, or edit existing ones. Also lets you convert one format to another. FontForge has support for many macintosh font formats.


 * Optimal Linux Fonts howto

Linux Fonts howto.


 * TrueType Typography

Probably the most comprehensive site on True Type Fonts outside of the site at Microsoft or Apple.


 * True Type Font to Postscript Type 1 Converter

A TrueType to Type1 converter. Also can create .afms, which Scribus uses for font handling. Can be compiled to run on Win32 with the Cygwin tools.


 * Type 1 Font Utilities

Type 1 utilities which ease the installation of Type 1 fonts. Some distributions include this with base install.


 * Typography and Font Guidelines

This site has an excellent set of guidelines for typography and font usage. Helpful for new designers and achieving readable documents.


 * Unicode Font Guide For Free/Libre Open Source Operating Systems

This is a selective guide to Unicode-based fonts and script projects that are ideal for free/libre/open source (FLOSS) operating systems like GNU/Linux and FreeBSD.