Where can I get good fonts?: Difference between revisions

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[[Category:FAQ]]
[[Category:FAQ]][[Category:Fonts]]
{{FAQ Index}}
{{FAQ Index}}


=Where can I get good fonts?=
=Where can I get good fonts?=


*There are some great freely licensed URW fonts from Artifex (makers of GhostScript and GhostPCL) that are well worth grabbing. There are some good quality fonts in there, like Clarendon, URW Bookman, and Antique Olive. See [http://www.scribus.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=Web_Links&file=index&req=viewlink&cid=3 Web Links on www.scribus.net] for those and several other sources of fonts and font information.
*[http://artifex.com/downloads/ Artifex] A set of 80 TrueType fonts, donated and freely licensed to Artifex Software Inc., makers of GhostScript and GhostPCL, by the URW foundry. The fonts are of pro quality and well worth grabbing. Nimbus Sans, Nimbus Roman, Garamond No.8, URW Palladio are just few of them that are worth mentioning. For a complete list and more information, see [http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Right_font_4_right_purpose Right font for right purpose on Scribus Wiki]


*The very prolific and very gifted type designer Manfred Klein has put a huge collection of high-quality TrueType fonts on the web at his [http://moorstation.org/typoasis/designers/klein/index.htm Fonteria]. Perhaps the best thing about Klein's selection is the large number of good text fonts that take off in subtle ways from classical serif faces. He offers the fonts "free for private and charity use. They are even free for commercial use – but if there’s any profit, pls make a donation to organizations like 'Doctors Without Borders.'"
*[http://www.gust.org.pl/projects/e-foundry/tex-gyre/ The TeX Gyre Collection of Fonts] A collection of 35 OpenType versions of Artifex fonts from the Polish TeX Users Group. With extended character set and true small capitals but under the different names, the fonts are of the same pro quality.


*[http://moorstation.org/typoasis/designers.htm TypeOasis], the site that hosts the Fonteria, has nice work by other designers, too.
*[http://www.sil.org/ SIL International] offers several good quality [http://www.sil.org/computing/catalog/show_software_catalog.asp?by=cat&name=Font free fonts], for Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Cyrillic alphabets and for some Asian and African scripts.


*Some free TrueType fonts can also be downloaded from [http://www.schriftgrad.de/Menueleiste/Xdownload.htm schriftgrad] which als hosts a good glossary on typography/printing/DTP in German.
*[https://googlefontdirectory.googlecode.com/hg/ Google Fonts] offers some very well done fonts under Open Source licenses. Previews are available [http://code.google.com/webfonts here].
*http://fonts.goldenweb.it/index_file/l/en is a directory with 20 590 free TrueType fonts of mixed quality.
*http://www.webpagepublicity.com/free-fonts-g.html contains 6500 TTF fonts, also free as in beer.


*Valery Friedman hosts a list of his [http://www.alvit.de/blog/article/20-best-license-free-official-fonts Free Quality Font Top 25] with some excellent fonts. Updates in [http://www.smashingmagazine.com/category/fonts/ Smashing Magazine].
*[http://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/ The League of Moveable Type] is where new Open Source fonts are collected and offered under the OFL or a CC license. The fonts are of very good quality and the collection, although slowly, is growing.
*[http://www.praegnanz.de/essays/ Gerrit van Aken] ([http://praegnanz.de/essays/freie-schriften-im-mini-portrait also these]) offers links to some excellent fonts and also provides reviews (German).
*[http://apostrophiclab.pedroreina.net/ Pedro Reina] has listed 189 freely available fonts, all of them Type 1, TrueType, PC/Mac. *[http://www.identifont.com/free-fonts.html Identifont] also listed some good fonts, some of which are already mentioned elsewhere in this article (e. g. Gentium).
*[http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/latest.html Luc Devroye] has regularly updated list of font foundries and desginers, including those offering free quality fonts.


*The [http://thelinuxbox.org/files/msttcorefonts.tar.gz MS Core TrueType fonts] ([http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/ Sourceforge.net]) might be useful too, though as far as I know they're not really designed for print use.
*[https://fedorahosted.org/liberation-fonts/ Liberation Font Family] A font family of 3 set - Sans, Serif and Monospace. Designed by Ascender Type Foundry, the fonts are of pro quality, also substitute for and metric compatible to Arial, Times New Roman and Courier New. A narrow sans family of the fonts, which ist metric compatible to Arial Narrow, was later contributed by Oracle Corporation.


*[http://www.fryfonts.com/ Fry Fonts] offers some popular fonts like Apple Garamond or Coca Cola in TrueType format for free download.
*[http://linuxlibertine.sourceforge.net Linux Libertine] offers two free font families under the GPL License: Linux Libertine (a bit like Times) and Linux Biolinum (Organic Grotesque). With a wide range of character sets as well as true Small Capitals, the fonts have pro quality.  


*Corel WP has the TTF fonts and Corel Draw has the TTF plus PS fonts. At least this is true for WP 8/9 and Draw 8/9. The fonts are in their own folders and can be copied WITHOUT installing the product anywhere. Despite rumours to the contrary, CorelDraw fonts are high quality Bitstream fonts which have been used by pre-press folks for years without incident.
*The [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Packaged_fonts Fedora project] continues to build a collection of high-quality fonts for different purposes, like non-Latin scripts or formulas. The collection also contains some fonts that can be used for Latin-based scripts.


*If you can get hold of an older printer driver CD from c. 2000, you may find a collection of high quality Adobe Type 1 fonts, including "classics" like ''Garamond'' on it. I recently discovered this, when I was given an old Lexmark LaserPrinter as a "present". While the printer itself wasn't too interesting (it prints OK, but that's it), the driver CD-ROM contained this treasure. Buying an old printer on e-bay, even if you don't intend to use it, can save you a lot of money with respect to high quality and industry standard fonts, provided you also receive the driver CD-ROM!
*[http://www.fontsquirrel.com/ Fontsquirrel] offers a selection of manually selected/searched high quality free fonts.


*Another affordable source for fonts is the German manufacturer of the multi-platform office suite [http://softmaker.de/ Softmaker] Office. They offer one "font of the month" for free download. If TrueType fonts are sufficient for your work, you can buy a [http://www.softmaker.de/megafont.htm CD-ROM] with 10 000 fonts for (at the moment) 59,95 EUR. In case you need professional grade fonts, they are offering [http://www.infinitype.com/features_en.htm 6000] TrueType and Type 1 fonts for 429 EUR (which isn't much).  
*The [http://thelinuxbox.org/files/msttcorefonts.tar.gz MS Core TrueType fonts] ([http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/ Sourceforge.net]) Also known as Web Safe fonts, which includes Arial and Times New Roman among others, released by Microsoft for free use.


*Adobe Illustrator has fonts (Adobe garamond etc.), also Adobe Type Manager (full product) has fonts but it is not strictly needed with XP since Win2K and XP render Type 1 fonts natively. ATM '''is''' useful for font management.
* [http://openfontlibrary.org/ Open Font Library] is a collection of fonts available under free licenses.


*There is also some good (and some bad) OS2 fonts at http://hobbes.nmsu.edu.
* [http://www.kimberlygeswein.com/ Kimberly Geswein] offers many fabulous, free-to-use handdrawn fonts with fabulous names.
 
*[http://thelinuxbox.org The Linux Box] offers an [http://thelinuxbox.org/files/fonts.tar.gz archive] with 6,760 True Type fonts for free download. Beware of its size, though: it is HUGE (157.7 MB).


*Another place worth looking at is the [ftp://ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/fonts/ German TeX Users Group (TUG)]. It provides some free high quality Type 1/TTF/Open Type fonts. Similarly, the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN) [http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/ offers] a wide range of excellent fonts. Previews are available [http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/index.html here].
*Another place worth looking at is the [ftp://ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/fonts/ German TeX Users Group (TUG)]. It provides some free high quality Type 1/TTF/Open Type fonts. Similarly, the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN) [http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/ offers] a wide range of excellent fonts. Previews are available [http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/index.html here].


*For using Chinese fonts under Linux, Gentoo developer Alastair 'liquidx' Tse, has written a guide on [http://dev.gentoo.org/~liquidx/chinesefonts/ Gentoo Linux Chinese Fonts HOWTO]. Worth check it out.
*For using Chinese fonts, the UbuntuCN wiki is worth to checkout, [http://wiki.ubuntu.org.cn/%E5%85%8D%E8%B4%B9%E4%B8%AD%E6%96%87%E5%AD%97%E4%BD%93 Free Chinese Font]
 
*[http://fontshop.de Fontshop] is a good place to go, but you might also have a look at [http://linotype.com Linotype], [http://lucasfonts.com Lucasfonts] and maybe [http://fontfabrik.com Fontfabrik] (they only retail). They are all German companies offering some really nice fonts, that unfortunately aren't affordable for everybody, because they are quite expensive.
 
An interesting article on [http://www.publish.com/article2/0,1759,1834275,00.asp publish.com] not only provides a little bit of history of professional font manufacturing, but also many links to commercial vendors. It might be worth checking their products.
 
* http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/fonts.html


==See Also==
==See Also==
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* [[Scribus_Links#Download_resources|Scribus Links: Download resource section]]
* [[Scribus_Links#Download_resources|Scribus Links: Download resource section]]
* [http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Font-HOWTO/ Optimal Use of Fonts on Linux] from The Linux Documentation Project
* [http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Font-HOWTO/ Optimal Use of Fonts on Linux] from The Linux Documentation Project
* [http://trends.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/02/22/1821200 A survey of free font licenses]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software_Unicode_typefaces Wikipedia on free open source fonts]
* [http://www.unifont.org/fontguide/ Unicode Font Guide For Free/Libre Open Source Operating Systems]
* [http://www.unifont.org/fontguide/ Unicode Font Guide For Free/Libre Open Source Operating Systems]
** ''Excellent'' guide to the latest news and release of Unicode Font for open source OS such as Linux and BSD
* [http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/latest.html Luc Devroye] has regularly updated list of font foundries and designers, including those offering free quality fonts. It also includes many [http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/fonts.html articles] on typography and fonts.

Latest revision as of 09:33, 16 June 2012


This article is part of the FAQ series.
Installation • Usage • PDF issues • Fonts • DTP • Other

Where can I get good fonts?

  • Artifex A set of 80 TrueType fonts, donated and freely licensed to Artifex Software Inc., makers of GhostScript and GhostPCL, by the URW foundry. The fonts are of pro quality and well worth grabbing. Nimbus Sans, Nimbus Roman, Garamond No.8, URW Palladio are just few of them that are worth mentioning. For a complete list and more information, see Right font for right purpose on Scribus Wiki
  • The TeX Gyre Collection of Fonts A collection of 35 OpenType versions of Artifex fonts from the Polish TeX Users Group. With extended character set and true small capitals but under the different names, the fonts are of the same pro quality.
  • SIL International offers several good quality free fonts, for Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Cyrillic alphabets and for some Asian and African scripts.
  • Google Fonts offers some very well done fonts under Open Source licenses. Previews are available here.
  • The League of Moveable Type is where new Open Source fonts are collected and offered under the OFL or a CC license. The fonts are of very good quality and the collection, although slowly, is growing.
  • Liberation Font Family A font family of 3 set - Sans, Serif and Monospace. Designed by Ascender Type Foundry, the fonts are of pro quality, also substitute for and metric compatible to Arial, Times New Roman and Courier New. A narrow sans family of the fonts, which ist metric compatible to Arial Narrow, was later contributed by Oracle Corporation.
  • Linux Libertine offers two free font families under the GPL License: Linux Libertine (a bit like Times) and Linux Biolinum (Organic Grotesque). With a wide range of character sets as well as true Small Capitals, the fonts have pro quality.
  • The Fedora project continues to build a collection of high-quality fonts for different purposes, like non-Latin scripts or formulas. The collection also contains some fonts that can be used for Latin-based scripts.
  • Fontsquirrel offers a selection of manually selected/searched high quality free fonts.
  • Kimberly Geswein offers many fabulous, free-to-use handdrawn fonts with fabulous names.
  • Another place worth looking at is the German TeX Users Group (TUG). It provides some free high quality Type 1/TTF/Open Type fonts. Similarly, the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN) offers a wide range of excellent fonts. Previews are available here.

See Also

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