1 2014-02-02: Release 6.3.20140202
3 This version is the first designed to easily build multiple fonts.
4 To accomplish this, font/Makefile and font/ttfsrc/Makefile were
5 modified to pass FONT and COMBINING parameters, giving the names
6 of the font file and its associated combining.txt file.
8 This version introduces a subset of Unicode's Supplemental Multilingual
9 Plane (SMP, or Plane 1). The file "font/plane01/plane01.hex" contains
10 a glyph for every visible code point in the Unicode 5.0 SMP except
11 "Cuneiform" and "Cuneiform Numbers and Punctuation"; those two scripts
12 require more resolution than what will fit within a 16 by 16 pixel grid.
13 Andrew Miller drew well over 1,000 glyphs for this effort, and added
14 glyphs for several SMP scripts introduced after Unicode 5.0.
16 This version also introduces a subset of the ConScript Unicode
17 Registry (CSUR) Private Use Area glyphs. Wojciech Stryjewski created
18 glyphs for Tengwar and Klingon -- Tolkien fans and Trekkies rejoice!
19 Paul Hardy drew Cirth to finish the Tolkien set, and drew other scripts.
20 Andrew Miller made very extensive additions for the CSUR; see the
21 ChangeLog for details.
23 Finally, this version includes a special PSF font for using APL
24 in console mode on GNU/Linux. This PSF font contains 512 glyphs
25 as a subset of Unifont; it will not work on systems that only
26 support PSF fonts with 256 glyphs. This PSF font will support
27 GNU APL and several other APL implementations.
29 The names of the font files are as follows:
31 unifont-* Font with Unifont Plane 0 glyphs
33 unifont_sample-* Font with Unifont glyphs, with combining
34 circles added for illustration
36 unifont_csur-* Font with glyphs from Unifont plus the
39 unifont_upper-* Font with glyphs from Planes 1 through 14
41 unifont_upper_csur-* Font with glyphs from Planes 1 through 15
43 Unifont-APL8x16.psf.gz The APL console font
45 Glyphs for code points U+FFFE and U+FFFF, previously added for illustration
46 purposes in unifont_sample, were removed because they caused problems on
47 Microsoft Windows XP. These glyphs are still included in the large bitmap
48 graphic of Unifont but are no longer in the font itself.
50 Many other small changes were made as noted in the ChangeLog file, but
51 support for glyphs beyond Unicode's Basic Multilingual Plane is the most
54 2013-12-21: Release 6.3.2013121
56 The default font name that hex2bdf creates has changed from
57 lower-case "unifont" to "Unifont".
59 FontForge's SetFontNames function calls were removed because
60 not all applications correctly interpreted their settings.
61 For example, LibreOffice only listed Unifont by the foundry
62 name ("GNU") rather than foundry + font name ("GNU Unifont")
63 or just the font name. Those calls are only commented out
64 so they could easily be re-introduced.
66 Some glyphs were changed for better appearance with APL.
68 2013-12-17: Release 6.3.20131217
70 This fixes three bugs:
72 * doc/Makefile: removed redirection of texi2pdf output.
73 * font/Makefile: don't modify PCF fonts with FontForge,
74 which alters them so grub-mkfont can't read them.
75 * font/ttfsrc/Makefile: remove *.bdf so unifont_sample.bdf
78 Also includes a few formatting changes; see ChangeLog.
80 2013-12-15: Release 6.3.20131215
82 This version introduces unihex2png and unipng2hex, two Perl scripts
83 that Andrew Miller wrote based upon Paul Hardy's unihex2bmp.c and
84 unibmp2hex.c programs. These new scripts allow conversion between
85 the Unifont .hex format and Portable Network Graphics (PNG) files
86 for graphical editing. With this addition, more graphics programs
87 can be used to edit Unifont glyphs.
89 unihex2png and unipng2hex also support glyphs that are 24 or 32
90 pixels tall, in addition to Unifont's default 16 pixels tall.
91 Roman Czyborra's hexdraw and hex2bdf Perl scripts were modified
92 to also support glyphs that are 16, 24, or 32 pixels tall. These
93 changes have not been fully tested, and at this point are considered
96 There are no plans to add this multi-height support to unihex2bmp.c
99 The package now contains a "doc/" directory, with documentation
100 in Texinfo format. Files in the "man/" directory were updated
101 for consistency, especially in noting that all programs are
102 covered under GPLv2+ now.
104 In addition to "unifont-*.*" font files, this package now also creates
105 "unifont_sample-*.*" files. These "Unifont Sample" fonts contain
106 combining circles, and four-digit hexadecimal glyphs for unassigned
107 code points and Private Use Area glyphs. Because of the inclusion
108 of combining cirlces, "Unifont Sample" font versions are only intended
109 for illustrating individual glyphs, not for general-purpose writing.
110 The two generated fonts are unifont_sample-*.bdf and unifont_sample-*.ttf.
111 The TTF file contains SBIT glyphs, not outlined TrueType glyphs like
114 The font versions (BDF, PCF, and TTF) now contain copyright and
115 version information. This will help identify outdated versions
116 of a font in the future. hex2bdf now accepts a version string and
117 a copyright string as command line arguments.
119 To simplify this package supporting two versions of Unifont
120 ("Unifont" and "Unifont Sample"), hex2bdf now accepts a font name
121 as a command line argument. This will streamline adding additional
122 fonts in the future as part of this same package. Note that the
123 old XLFD font name "unifont" has now been capitalized to "Unifont".
125 Many XLFD properties have been added to the BDF version of Unifont
126 in addition to font version and copyright XLFD properties. At least
127 some of these are carried over to the PCF version during conversion
128 with bdftopcf. This has solved an issue with grub-mkfont and FreeType
129 for converting the PCF font into a GRUB version.
131 Some glyphs were redrawn: the Capricorn sign, several CJK Radicals
132 Supplement ideographs, and several Armenian letters. The Armenian
133 letters were modified with the new unihex2png and unipng2hex programs.
135 Further details are in the ChangeLog file.
137 2013-10-20: Release 6.3.20131020
139 This is the first release as part of the GNU Project.