mainFree UCS Outline Fonts - Support: sr #106274, Free UCS scalable fonts report

 
 

sr #106274: Free UCS scalable fonts report

Submitter:  None
Submitted:  Fri 22 Feb 2008 04:26:54 AM UTC
   
 
Category:  None Priority:  5 - Normal
Severity:  3 - Normal Status:  Done
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  Stevan_White
Originator Email:  -email is unavailable- Open/Closed:  Closed
Operating System:  None
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Sun 19 Sep 2010 02:51:08 PM UTC, comment #3: 

Closing, since almost the entire list was digested into bug reports and dealt with that way.

Thanks again!

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Wed 21 Oct 2009 07:51:58 PM UTC, comment #2: 

Descenders, strokes and bars on cyrillic letters cannot be noticed on FreeSerif at size 14.

Henrique Peron <hperon>
Sun 20 Apr 2008 09:14:02 AM UTC, comment #1: 

Jacob,

I have started going through your long list.

I will break up my responses into individual bug reports, and CC you.  This raises a question, how to organize such a long list.  Individual bug reports would be very redundant.

My organization is the following:

I go through the list for each face as well as I can, making notes as to my solution, or thoughts on it.

Then I group the reports according to solution, and make a bug report to each solution.

Thanks again!

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Fri 22 Feb 2008 04:26:54 AM UTC, original submission:  

FreeMono
--------

The null/.notdef glyph incorrectly occupies less spaces than other glyphs in the font.

Low line (U+005F) in italic fonts are not slanted.

Low line (U+005F) in bold fonts do not have heavier weight.

In Latin capital letters A with circumflex (eg: U+00C2, U+1EA4, U+1EA6, U+1EA8, U+1EAA), tilde (eg: U+00C3), diaeresis (eg: U+00C4, U+01DE), ring above (eg: U+00C5, U+01FA), macron (eg: U+100), dot above (eg: U+1E0, U+226), inverted breve (eg: U+202), hook above (eg: U+1EA2, U+1EA8, U+1EAA, U+1EB2), the accent is shifted to slightly left of the apex of A.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Latin Capital Letter Thorn (U+00DE) has uneven distance between top and bottom of vertical bar with respect to the ring, reducing legibility of the glyph.

Latin ligatures IJ (U+132-133) in all font variants do not have connected letters within each glyphs, so they are not real ligatures.

Latin letters K with cedilla (U+136-137) have comma below diacritical mark instead of cedilla.

Latin small letter n preceded by apostrophe (U+149) on all irregular variants of FreeMono do not contain preceding apostrophe.

Capital Letter NJ (U+01CA) in FreeMono are incorrectly connected.

Latin capital letter A with dot above and macron (U+1E0) in italic fonts do not have macron aligned to the middle of the respective letters, even after taking the slant angle into account.

Latin letters A with double grave (U+200-201), inverted breve (U+0202-0203) have longer right margins than other glyphs in the font.  Consequentially, they incorrectly occupy more spaces than other glyphs in the font.

Latin capital letters A or R with inverted breve (eg: U+202, U+212), double grave (U+210), the accent is shifted to slightly left of the apex of the letter.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Latin small letter dotless j with stroke and hook (U+284) in bold fonts has 2 horizontal strokes instead of just 1.

Latin small letter squat (U+285) in BoldOblique font is shorter than other fonts in the same family.

Bold and oblique versions of Latin small letter turned k (U+29E) are incorrectly moved up from the baseline.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Latin small letter ts digraph (U+02A6) only has letter t, not s.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Modifier letter right half ring (U+2BE), Modifier letter left half ring (U+2BF) in Oblique font have inner arcs drawn in polygon lines instead of real curves.  The bug does not exist in other font variants.

Glyphs in Combining Diacritical Marks (U+300-36F) have asymmetric horizontal margins, and incorrectly occupy less spaces than other glyphs in the font.  This may be the root cause of the asymmetric accents in Latin capital letters A as mentioned above, and perhaps some other unspecified asymmetries.

Greek numeral signs (U+374-375) in BoldOblique font are not slanted.

Cyrillic letters semisoft sign (U+48C-48D) in bold fonts do not have horizontal stroke.  The bug does not exist in other font families.  In addition, there should be no serif at the top of the glyph.

Cyrillic letters er with tick (U+48E-48F) in BoldOblique font do not have tick.

Cyrillic capital letter Ghe with middle hook (U+494) in BoldOblique font, Cyrillic small letter ghe with middle hook (U+495) in bold fonts are incorrectly drawn with Cyrillic letter Ghe.

Cyrillic letters Bashkir ka (U+4A0-4A1) in bold fonts do not have upper left hooks.

Cyrillic ligatures En Ghe (U+4A4-4A5) in bold fonts do not have upper right hooks.

Cyrillic capital letter Pe with middle hook (U+4A6) in BoldOblique font, Cyrillic small letter pe with middle hook (U+4A7) in bold fonts are incorrectly drawn without middle hook.

Cyrillic letters abkhasian ha (U+4A8-4A9) in all font variants look like Latin letter C instead of C with curl.

Cyrillic letters es with descender (U+4AA-4AB) in bold fonts do not have cedilla.

Cyrillic letters abkhasian che (U+4BC-4BF) in bold fonts look like Latin letter C instead of heavier version of the non-bold glyphs.

Cyrillic letters Ka with hook (U+4C3-4C4) in bold fonts do not have hooks.

Cyrillic letters En with hook (U+4C7-4C8) in bold fonts do not have hooks.

Cyrillic letters Khakassian che (U+4CB-4CC) in bold fonts do not have tails.

Cyrillic letters schwa (U+4D8-4DB) in bold fonts do not look like inverted Latin letters e.

Latin small letters b with dot below (U+1E05), line below (U+1E07), have the diacritical marks not aligned to the middle of the drawn region of the glyph.

Latin small letters d with dot below (U+1E0B), line below (U+1E0D), have the diacritical marks not aligned to the middle of the drawn region of the glyph.

Latin capital letter D with cedilla (U+1E10) in bold and italic variants do not have cedilla aligned to the middle of the glyph.

Latin small letter d with cedilla (U+1E11) does not have cedilla connected to the bottom of the circle of the glyph.  The bug does not exist in other variants of the font.

Latin small letter r with dot below and macron (U+1E5D) of the bold and italic fonts have diacritical mark shifted to the right of the letter.

Latin letters u with tilde and acute (U+1E78-1E79) in bold font have acute incorrectly shifted to the right of the letter.

Latin capital letters A with hook above (U+1EA2-1EA3), small a with circumflex and hook above (U+1EA9), Latin letters A with breve and hook above (eg: U+1EB2-1EB3), incorrectly occupy more space than other glyphs in the font.

Latin letters A, E, I, O, U, Y with hook above (U+1EA2-1EA3, U+1EA8-1EA9, U+1EB2-1EB3, U+1EBA-1EBB, U+1EC2-1EC3, U+1EC8-1EC9, U+1ECE-1ECF, U+1ED4-1ED5, U+1EDE-1EDF, U+1EE6-1EE7, U+1EEC-1EED, U+1EF6-1EF7) in Bold font do not have hooks aligned to the apexes of cirumflexes, resulting glyphs incorrectly wider than the rest of glyphs in the font.

Latin letters A with breve and hook above (eg: U+1EB2-1EB3) have breves and hooks incorrectly overlapped.

Some Latin letters with horn and other accent (U+1EDA-1EEF) in Medium and Oblique fonts incorrectly have the other accents aligned to horns instead of the middle of the respective letters, resulting in wider glyphs than they should be.

Greek capital letters with multiple upper diacritical marks (U+1F0A-0F, 1F1A-1F1F, 1F2A-1F2F, 1F3A-1F3F, 1F4A-1F4F, 1F5A-1F5F, 1F6A-1F6F) of all font variants incorrectly occupy wider spaces than the rest of the font.

Greek capital letters with prosgegrammeni (U+1F88-1F8F, U+1F98-1F9F, U+1FA8-1FAF, U+1FBC, U+1FDC, U+1FFC) have prosgegrammeni incorrectly placed at the right side of the letter instead of at below, in oblique variant of the font.  As a result, the glyphs incorrectly occupy wider spaces than the rest of the font.

Greek capital letters with oxia (U+1FC9, 1FCB, 1FDB, 1FEB, 1FF9, 1FFB), capital letter alpha with varia (U+1FBA) in oblique variant of the font incorrectly occupy wider spaces than the rest of the font.

Greek Psili (U+1FBF) and Greek Dasia (U+1FFE) are incorrectly drawn using semicircles, which also affects Greek Extended glyphs using the diacritical marks.  The bug does not exist in other font families.  They should look more like commas.

Superscript Latin small letter i (U+2071) in Oblique font is blank instead of showing actual glyph.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Care of (U+2105) in the oblique font only shows Latin small letter c instead of actual glyph.

Cada una (U+2106) in the oblique font misses Latin small letter e.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Double-struck capital letters (U+210D, U+2115, U+2119-211A) only have the double-struck effect on some vertical strokes, making the glyphs harder to differentiate.  To improve legibility, the vertical strokes should be replaced by heavy hollowed strokes instead of adding vertical bar to base glyph.

L B bar symbol (U+2114) does not have a bar crossing between letters.

Inverted ohm sign (U+2127) is incorrectly placed outside the font grid.  The bug does not exist in other font variants.

Parentheses in Miscellaneous Technical (U+2300-23FF) have different font weights than the rest of the font.  In addition, many of the glyphs do not have proper stroke terminators for the font family.

Top square bracket (U+23B4) shows only blank space rather than a glyph.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Cross of Jerusalem (U+2629) has 5 crosses instead of 1.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Braille Pattern glyphs (U+2800-28FF) do not contain white dots, which can make some glyphs confusingly similar to other punctuations and symbols, such as Proportion (U+2237), Colon, Diaeresis, Vertical four dots (U+205E).  The bug does not exist in other font families.

There are 2 glyphs assigned to Private Use Area (U+E000-F8FF) in each font variant, which do not serve any useful purposes.  These characters should be unassigned, and the source glyphs should be removed if they are not used by other assigned characters in any way.

Latin small ligatures (U+FB00-FB06) in all font variants do not have connected letters within each glyph, so they are not real ligatures.

Latin small ligature st (U+FB06) does not have letter s.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Replacement character (U+FFFD) in all font variants uses FreeSans Medium question mark instead of the glyph from its own font.  Consequentially, the question marks in all bold fonts do not have heavier weights, and the glyphs in oblique fonts are not slanted.

Replacement character (U+FFFD) in non-Medium font incorrectly occupies more space than other glyphs in the font.

The font stored 2 copies of 'uni1FEE' glyphs, even though the second copy was never used.  The 2nd copy should be removed.

FreeSans
--------

Latin ligatures IJ (U+132-133) in BoldOblique font do not have letters J.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Latin letters K with cedilla (U+136-137) have comma below diacritical mark instead of cedilla.

Latin capital letter K with hook (U+198), Latin small letter lambda with stroke (U+19B) in all font variants have diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which do not fit the design in the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Latin letter O with horn (U+1A0-1A1), U with horn (U+1AF-1B0) in non-bold fonts have diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which do not fit the design in the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Latin small letter ezh with tail (U+1BA) have diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which do not fit the design in the rest of the font.

Latin letters R with double grave (U+210-211) in bold or italic fonts has accent incorrectly shifted to the left.

Latin capital letter R with inverted breve (U+212) has larger right margin than other Latin capital letter R glyphs.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Latin capital letter R with inverted breve (U+212) in bold fonts have accents incorrectly shifted to the left.

Latin small letter c with curl (U+255) have diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which do not fit the design in the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Latin small letter closed reversed open e (U+25E), Latin small letter l with belt (U+26C), Latin small letter lezh (U+26E) in oblique font are blank instead of actual glyphs.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Latin small letter script g (U+261) in non-italic fonts have diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which do not fit the design in the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Lower right stroke in Latin letters small capital R (U+280-281) in all font variants is not the same style as Latin capital R of the same font, which do not fit the designs in the rest of the respective fonts.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Latin small letter dotless j with stroke and hook (U+284) in bold or oblique fonts has 2 horizontal strokes instead of just 1.

Latin small letter esh with curl (U+286), Latin small letter j with crossed-tail (U+29D) have diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which do not fit the design in the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Modifier letter right half ring (U+2BE), Modifier letter left half ring (U+2BF) in Medium font have inner arcs drawn in polygon lines instead of real curves.  The bug does not exist in other font variants.

Combining horn (U+31B) have diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which do not fit the design in the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Combining retroflex hook below (U+322) shows empty space instead of the actual glyph.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Combining cedilla (U+327) of all font variants has diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font families.  The bug also affects other glyphs in the font using cedilla.

Combining half rings (U+31C, U+339, U+351, U+357) of all styles have three-quarter arcs instead of true half rings.

Combining inverted double arch below (U+32C) of all font variants has outer arcs curved inwards, not true arches.

Combining seagull below (U+33C) is simply a inverted version of combining inverted double arch below (U+32C), not true seagull.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Greek numeral signs (U+374-375) in BoldOblique font are not slanted.

Greek numeral signs (U+374-375) in BoldOblique font are not heavier.

Greek small letter iota with dialytika and tonos (U+390), Greek capital letter psi (U+3A8), Greek small letter alpha with tonos (U+3AC), Greek small letter eta with tonos (U+3AE), Greek small letter iota with tonos (U+3AF), Greek small letter alpha (U+3B1), Greek small letter gamma (U+3B3), Greek small letter zeta (U+3B6), Greek small letter eta (U+3B7), Greek small letter iota (U+3B9), Greek small letter lambda (U+3BB), Greek small letter xi (U+3BE), Greek small letter pi (U+3C0), Greek small letter final sigma (U+3C2), Greek small letter tau (U+3C4), Greek small letter phi (U+3C6), Greek small letter omega (U+3C9), Greek small letter iota with dialytika (U+3CA), Greek small letter omega with tonos (U+3CE), Greek kappa symbol (U+3F0) in all font variants have diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Cyrillic capital letter Dje (U+402), Cyrillic capital letter Tshe (U+40B), Cyrillic letters Che (U+427, U+447, U+4B6-4B9, U+4F4-4F5), Cyrillic capital letter Ghe with middle hook (U+494), Cyrillic letters pe with middle hook (U+4A6-4A7), Cyrillic letters Chha (U+4BA-4BB), Cyrillic letters ka with hook (U+4C3-4C4), Cyrillic letters khakassian Che (U+4CB-4CC) in all font variants have curve stroke styles similar to Eurostile instead of Helvetica, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.

Cyrillic letters ya (U+42F, U+44F) in all font variants are not reflections of latin capital letter R within the same font, which do not fit the designs in the rest of the respective fonts.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Cyrillic letters abkhasian ha (U+4A8-4A9) in all font variants look like Latin letter C instead of C with curl.

Hebrew letter yod (U+5D9), Hebrew ligature Yiddish vav yod (U+5F1), Hebrew ligature Yiddish double yod (U+5F2) in all font variants have diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Bold glyphs in U+617-61C incorrectly contain Latin glyphs.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Arabic semicolon (U+61B) in bold font have Latin small letter l instead of semicolon.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Syriac harklean asteriscus (U+70D) has crooked vertical stroke when viewed under large font sizes.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Various glyphs in Devanagari region (U+900-97F), such as Devanagari danda (U+964), Devanagari double danda (U+965), have diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Glyphs in Bengali area (U+980-9FF) in regular and oblique variants have lighter weight than the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Glyphs in Gurmukhi area (U+A00-A7F) have lighter weight than the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Glyphs in Gujarati area (U+A80-AFF) have heavier weight than the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Glyphs in Oriya (U+B00-B7F), Tamil (U+B80-BFF), Kannada (U+C80-CFF) areas have lighter weight than the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Latin capital letter D with cedilla (U+1E10) of all variants do not have cedilla aligned to the middle of the glyph.

Latin capital letter D with circumflex below (U+1E12) of all variants have diacritical mark shifted to the left of the letter.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Latin letters H with cedilla (U+1E28, U+1E29) in bold fonts do not have cedilla attached to the lower left end of the letters.

Latin capital letter P with dot above (U+1E56), R with dot above (U+1E58), R dot below and macron (U+1E5C) have diacritical mark shifted to the left of the letter.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Latin small letter r with dot below and macron (U+1E5D) of the bold font have diacritical mark shifted to the right of the letter.

Latin small letter u with diaeresis below (U+1E73), tilde below (U+1E75), circumflex below (U+1E77) of all variants have diacritical mark shifted to the left of the letter.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Latin letters u with tilde and acute (U+1E78-1E79) in all font variants have acute incorrectly shifted to the right of the letter.

Latin capital letter E with circumflex and grave (U+1EC0) has grave accent not above circumflex.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Latin letters with horn and other accent (U+1EDA-1EEF) in bold fonts incorrectly have the other accents aligned to horns instead of the middle of the respective letters, resulting in wider glyphs than they should be.

Greek small letters alpha, eta, iota, omega with psili, dasia, varia, oxia, perispomeni, ypogegrammeni, yrachy, macron, dialytika (U+1F00-1FFF) in all font variants have diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Greek capital letters with prosgegrammeni (U+1F88-1F8F, U+1F98-1F9F, U+1FA8-1FAF, U+1FBC, U+1FDC, U+1FFC) have prosgegrammeni incorrectly placed at the right side of the letter instead of at below, in all font variants.

Greek capital letters Eta with psili (U+1F9A-1F9D) in Oblique font have wider gap between psili and the letter than other fonts in the family.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Superscript Latin small letter i (U+2071) in Oblique font is in subscript position instead of superscript position.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Euro sign (U+20AC) in all font variants has diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.  Although official Euro currency symbol has diagonal stroke terminators, the symbol used in the font is not meant to be an exact replica of the official symbol, nor the glyph needs to be an exact replica to be uniquely recognizable.  In fact, Euro sign in FreeMono does not have diagonal stroke terminators.  The glyph should be redesigned as Latin capital letter C with 2 equal length horizontal strokes intersecting letter C.

The script and black-letter glyphs in Letterlike Symbols (U+2100-214F) do not fit the design characteristic of the font.  Although the explicit style descriptions of the characters limit to how a glyph is designed without contradicting the description, the script and black-letter glyphs glyphs can still be made to fit the design by using fixed stroke width with flat stroke terminator, similar to how the 'Courier' script and black-letter glyphs in FreeMono.  In fact, the script and black-letter glyphs in MS Gothic 2.5 and 5.00 family are designed in manners as mentioned above.  The script glyphs in non-oblique fonts should be strighten up.

Script capital F (U+2131) is not a script capital at all.  In fact, it looks like obligue Latin capital letter F with hook and obligue Latin small letter F overlapping each other.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Arrows in Arrows area (U+2190-21FF) in BoldOblique font are not slanted.

Tilde and slash in Mathematical Operators (U+2200-22FF) in all font variants have diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.  Ironically, slash in FreeSerif is actually designed correctly for use in FreeSans.  For that matter, Inverse lazy S (U+223E) in current font is more proper design for the tilde.

Partial differential (U+2202) in Oblique and BoldOblique fonts has uneven stroke weight within a glyph, which do not fit the designs in the rest of the respective fonts.

N-Ary summation (U+2211) in non-medium font variants have serifs, which do not fit the designs in the rest of the respective fonts.  Furthermore, the glyphs in all font variants have the same weight.

Asterisk operator (U+2217) has a non-uniform stroke weight, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Square root (U+221A) in all font variants has non-uniform font weight within the glyph, and share the same font weight for bold and non-bold fonts, which do not fit the designs in the rest of the respective fonts.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Angle (U+2220), Logical operators (U+2227-222A) have lighter font weights than the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Logical or (U+2228) has diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Integral (U+222B), double integral (U+222C), triple integral (U+222D), contour integral (U+222E) in all font variants have diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Integral (U+222B) in bold font is slanted instead of upright.

Inverse lazy S (U+223E) looks more like tilde instead of letter S.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Diameter sign (U+2300) has lighter font weights than the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Half integrals (U+2320-2321) have diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font families.  In addition, the glyphs do not reach their respective character cell vertical margins, which can cause equation editors to leave a gap when constructing large integral symbol.

Left one quarter block (U+258E), left one eighth block (U+258F), right one eighth block (U+2595) have incorrectly wider right margins than the other block glyphs of the same class.

Lozenge (U+25CA) in bold fonts does not have heavier stroke weight.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Lozenge (U+25CA) in Oblique font is not slanted.

Dotted circle (U+25CC) is blank instead of showing actual glyph.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.  In addition, dotted circle (U+25CC) in bold font has dashed circle instead of dotted circle.

Musical symbols (U+2669-266F) in all font variants have uneven stroke weights, which do not fit the designs in the rest of the respective fonts.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

White florette (U+2741) of all font variants has both black and white petals instead of just white.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Eight petaled outlined black florette (U+2742) of all font variants has 12 white petals instead of 8 black petals.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Glyphs in CJK Symbols and Punctuation (U+3000-303F), Hiragana (U+3040-309F), Katakana (U+30A0-30FF) regions in all font variants have higher base line than the rest of the font.

Ideographic comma (U+3001), ideographic full stop (U+3002), ditto mark (U+3003), ideographic iteration mark (U+3005), left white corner bracket (U+300E), right white corner bracket (U+300F) have font weights different from the rest of the font, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.

Ideographic comma (U+3001), ideographic full stop (U+3002), ideographic iteration mark (U+3005), left angle bracket (U+3008), right angle bracket (U+3009), left angle double bracket (U+300A), right angle double bracket (U+300B), left corner bracket (U+300C), right white bracket (U+300D), left white corner bracket (U+300E), right white corner bracket (U+300F), left black lenticular bracket (U+3010), right black lenticular bracket (U+3011), left tortoise shell bracket (U+3014), right tortoise shell bracket (U+3015), combining katakana-hiragana voiced sound mark (U+3099), katakana-hiragana voiced sound mark (U+309B) have wider than normal horizontal margins.  Because the font is proportionally spaced, horizontal margins of these glyphs should be made proportional, as in the rest of the font.  However, U+3099 is intended to be used for glyph compositing purpose, so this glyph should have the same width as the rest of the full-width kana glyphs.

Ideographic number zero (U+3007) is incorrectly drawn as ellipse.

Left angle bracket (U+3008), right angle bracket (U+3009), left corner bracket (U+300C), right white bracket (U+300D), left tortoise shell bracket (U+3014), right tortoise shell bracket (U+3015) have obvious signs of strokes crossing each other at the stroke intersections.  In addition, the glyphs have round stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.

Glyphs in Hiragana (U+3040-309F), Katakana (U+30A0-30FF) regions in all font variants have diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Glyphs in Hiragana (U+3040-309F), Katakana (U+30A0-30FF) regions in all font variants have higher baselines than the rest of the font.  These characters should be treated as characters in Block Elements region, but the baseline of these glyphs should be between the baseline for Latin characters and the bottom margin of Latin descender.

Small letters in Hiragana (U+3040-309F), Katakana (U+30A0-30FF) regions in all font variants occupy same widths as the full-sized counterpart, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.  Because the font is proportionally spaced, horizontal margins of these glyphs should be same as the rest of the font.

There are 12-15 characters in the Private Use Area (U+E000-F8FF) in each font variant, which do not serve any useful purposes.  These characters should be unassigned, and the source glyphs should be removed if they are not used by other assigned characters in any way.

Latin small ligatures (U+FB00-FB06) in all font variants do not have connected letters within each glyph, so they are not real ligatures.

Hebrew letter yod with hiriq (U+FB1D), Hebrew ligature Yiddish yod yod patah (U+FB1F), Hebrew letter yod with dagesh (U+FB39) in all font variants have diagonal stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Replacement character (U+FFFD) in all font variants uses FreeSans Medium question mark instead of the glyph from its own font.  Consequentially, the question marks in all bold fonts do not have heavier weights, and the glyphs in oblique fonts are not slanted.

FreeSerif
---------

Asterisk (U+002A), plus sign (U+002B), full stop (U+002E), less-than sign (U+003C), equal sign (U+003D), greater-than sign (U+003E), Commercial at (U+0040), Circumflex accent (U+005E), Low line (U+005F), Vertical line (U+007C), Currency sign (U+00A4), Broken bar (U+00A6), copyright sign (U+00A9), Not sign (U+00AC), registered sign (U+00AE), degree sign (U+00B0), plus-minus sign (U+00B1), middle dot (U+00B7), multiplication sign (U+00D7), division sign (U+00F7) in italic fonts are not slanted.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Solidus (U+002F) in Italic and BoldItalic fonts have differenet slanting angles.  The more slanted angle should be used on both italic fonts.

Commercial at (U+0040), degree sign (U+00B0) in bold fonts do not have heavier weights.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Low line (U+005F) in bold fonts do not have heavier weight.

Tilde (U+007E) in all font variants has uniform stroke weight, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.  Tilde from tilde operator (U+223C) of the same font should be used.

Latin capital ligature IJ (U+132) in all font variants, Latin small ligature ij (U+133) in non-italic fonts do not have connected letters within each glyphs, so they are not real ligatures.

Latin letters K with cedilla (U+136-137) have comma below diacritical mark instead of cedilla.

Latin letter dental click (U+01C0) in BoldItalic font is not slanted.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Latin letters A with diaeresis and macron (U+1DE-1DF) in italic fonts do not have macrons aligned to the middle of the respective letters, even after taking the slant angle into account.

Latin letters A with dot above and macron (U+1E0-1E1) in Bold font have incorrectly wider right margins.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Latin capital letter A with dot above and macron (U+1E0) in italic fonts do not have macron aligned to the middle of the respective letters, even after taking the slant angle into account.

Latin capital letters G with acute (U+1F4-1FB) do not have acute.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Latin letters A with ring above and acute (U+1FA-1FB) do not have acutes.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Latin letters A with double grave (U+200-201), A with inverted breve (U+202-203), E with double grave (U+204-205), E with inverted breve (U+206-207), capital I with double grave (U+208), capital I with inverted breve (U+20A), O with double grave (U+20C-20D), O with inverted breve (U+20E-20F), U with double grave (U+214-215), U with inverted breve (U+216-217) in Bold font have incorrectly wider right margins.  The bug does not exist in other font variants.

Latin small letter i with double grave (U+209) in Bold and Italic fonts has accent incorrectly shifted to the left.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Latin capital letter O with double grave (U+20C) in bold font has accent incorrectly shifted to the right.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Latin letters R with double grave (U+210-211) in bold or italic fonts has accent incorrectly shifted to the left.

Latin capital letter R with inverted breve (U+212) in bold or italic fonts, Latin small letter R with inverted breve (U+213) in Italic font, have accents incorrectly shifted to the left.

Latin letters U with double grave (U+214-215) in Bold font have accents incorrectly shifted to the right.

Latin capital letter A with dot above (U+226) in italic fonts has accent incorrectly shifted to the right.

Latin small letter turner r with hook (U+27B) in Medium font has 1 too many serifs.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Latin small letter dotless j with stroke and hook (U+284) in all font variants has 2 strokes instead of just 1.

Latin small letter squat (U+285) in Medium font is shorter than other fonts in the same family.

Modifier letter right half ring (U+2BE), Modifier letter left half ring (U+2BF) in Medium font have three-quarter arcs instead of true half rings.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Dot above (U+2D9), ring above (U+2DA) in italic fonts are not slanted.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Combining macron (U+304), combining overline (U+305), combining dot above (U+307), combining diaeresis (U+308), combining ring above (U+30A), combining dot below (U+323), combining diaeresis below (U+324), combining ring below (U+325), combining stroke overlays (U+335-336) in italic fonts are not slanted.  The bug also affects glyphs using the diacritical marks.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Combining vertical line above (U+30D), Combining double vertical line above (U+30E) in BoldItalic font are not slanted.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Combining half rings (U+31C, U+339, U+351, U+357) of all styles have three-quarter arcs instead of true half rings.  The bug affects other characters containing half rings, such as Latin small letter a with right halfring (U+1E9A).

Combining inverted double arch below (U+32B) of all font variants has outer arcs curved into middle, not true arches.

Combining grave tone mark (U+340), combining acute tone mark (U+341), combining Greek koronis (U+343) show empty spaces instead of the actual glyphs.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Combining double tilde (U+360), combining double inverted breve (U+361) in non-Medium fonts have swapped glyphs.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Greek numeral signs (U+374-375) in BoldItalic font are not slanted.

Greek ano teleia (U+387) in italic fonts are not slanted.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Greek letters stigma (U+3DA-3DB) in bold fonts look different from non-bold versions.  The bug does not exist in other font families.  They should look more like the non-bold glyphs.

Greek small letter digamma (U+3DD) in all font variants looks more like a cursive Latin capital F than digamma, which do not fit the designs in the rest of the respective fonts.  It should look more like a Roman glyph, but without serif at the bottom.

Greek letter koppa (U+3DE) in BoldItalic font look different from Medium versions.  The bug does not exist in other font families.  Both glyphs should look more like the revered Latin capital letter N with hooks at stroke terminators.

Greek letter sampi (U+3E0) in Medium font is different from glyphs in other variants.  The bug does not exist in other font families.  It should look more like small sampi.

Cyrillic capital letter Kje (U+40C) in BoldItalic font has accent incorrectly shifted to the left.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Cyrillic letters semisoft sign (U+48C-48D) in all font variants incorrectly include serifs at the top.  There should be no serif at the top of the glyph.

Cyrillic letters er with tick (U+48E-48F) in Italic font do not have tick.

Cyrillic small letter ghe with stroke (U+493) has different appearence between Italic and BoldItalic fonts.  The styling of Italic font should be used on BoldItalic font.

Cyrillic capital letter Ghe with middle hook (U+494) in Bold font, Cyrillic small letter ghe with middle hook (U+495) in italic fonts are incorrectly drawn with Cyrillic letter Ghe.

Cyrillic letters Bashkir ka (U+4A0-4A1) in italic fonts do not have upper left hooks.

Cyrillic ligatures En Ghe (U+4A4-4A5) in italic fonts do not have upper right hooks.

Cyrillic capital letter Pe with middle hook (U+4A6) in Bold font, Cyrillic small letter pe with middle hook (U+4A7) in italic fonts are incorrectly drawn without middle hook.

Cyrillic letters abkhasian ha (U+4A8-4A9) in non-medium font variants look like Latin letter C instead of C with curl.

Cyrillic letters es with descender (U+4AA-4AB) in italic fonts do not have cedilla.

Cyrillic letters abkhasian che (U+4BC-4BF) in bold fonts to not have hook at the upper left of the letter.  Furthermore, Cyrillic letters abkhasian che with descender (U+4BE-4BF) in bold fonts do not have descender.

Cyrillic letters Ka with hook (U+4C3-4C4) in non-Medium fonts do not have hooks.

Cyrillic letters En with hook (U+4C7-4C8) in italic fonts do not have hooks.

Cyrillic letters Khakassian che (U+4CB-4CC) in italic fonts do not have tails.

Cyrillic small letter palochka (U+4CF) has an acute accent instead of the actual letter glyph, and has unusally wide left margin.  The bugs do not exist in other font families.  The glyph should look like Latin small letter l.

Cyrillic letters schwa (U+4D8, U+4DA) in Medium and Italic fonts do not have the inverted Latin letters e.  The bug does not exist in other font variants.

Cyrillic small letter u with macron (U+4EF) in Bold font has unusally wide right margin.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Arabic-Indic digits (U+660-669), Arabic decimal separator (U+66B) have glyphs at superscript positions instead of at baseline.

Glyphs in Thaana region (U+780-7BF) have round stroke terminators instead of horizontal or vertical, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.

Glyphs in Bengali (U+980-9FF), Gurmukhi (U+A00-A7F) regions in all font variant have lighter weights than the rest of the respective fonts.

Glyphs in Ethiopic region (U+1200-137F) in medium font are incorrectly slanted.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.  These glyphs should be straighened up.  The already slanted glyphs should be moved to the italic font.

Latin letter small capital barred B (U+1D03) does not have a horizontal bar crossing the middle of the letter.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Latin letter small capital K (U+1D0B) has capital letter J instead of K.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Latin letter small capital L with stroke (U+1D0C) has capital letter K instead of proper glyph.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Latin letter small capital M (U+1D0D) has capital letter L instead of M.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Latin letter small capital reversed N (U+1D0E) has capital letter M instead of proper glyph.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Latin small letter d with cedilla (U+1E11) in all font variants does not have cedilla connected to the bottom of the circle of the glyph.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Latin letters H with cedilla (U+1E28, U+1E29) in all font variants do not have cedilla attached to the lower left end of the letters.

Latin letters N with circumflex below (U+1E4A-1E4B) in italic fonts do not have diacritical marks aligned to the middle of the letter.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Latin small letter a with right half ring (U+1E9A) has three-quarter ring accent instead of true half ring.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Latin letters A with circumflex and hook above (U+1EA8-1EA9) in Bold font do not have hooks aligned to the apexes of cirumflexes, resulting incorrectly wider glyphs.

Latin letters A, E, I, O, U, Y with hook above (U+1EA2-1EA3, U+1EA8-1EA9, U+1EBA-1EBB, U+1EC2-1EC3, U+1EC8-1EC9, U+1ECE-1ECF, U+1ED4-1ED5, U+1EDE-1EDF, U+1EE6-1EE7, U+1EEC-1EED, U+1EF6-1EF7) in all font variants do not have hooks aligned to the middle of the letter, resulting glyphs incorrectly wider than the rest of glyphs in the font.

Latin letters A with breve and hook above (U+1EB2-1EB3) in Bold font have breves and hooks incorrectly overlapped.

Latin letters with horn and other accent (U+1EDA-1EEF) in italic fonts incorrectly have the other accents aligned to horns instead of the middle of the respective letters, resulting in wider glyphs than they should be.

Greek capital letters with prosgegrammeni (U+1F88-1F8F, U+1F98-1F9F, U+1FA8-1FAF, U+1FBC, U+1FDC, U+1FFC) in all font variants have prosgegrammeni incorrectly placed at the right side of the letter instead of at below, resulting in wider glyphs than they should be.

Zero width non-joiner (U+200C), Zero width joiner (U+200D) in non-italic fonts are blank instead of showing proper glyphs.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Left-to-right mark (U+200E), right-to-left mark (U+200F) in Bold font are blank instead of showing proper glyphs.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Bullets (U+2022-2023), dot leaders (U+2024-2025), horizontal ellipsis (U+2026), per mille sign (U+2030), per ten shousand sign (U+2031), reference mark (U+203B), asterism (U+2042), fraction slash (U+2044) in italic fonts are not slanted.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Prime (U+2032) in Bold font is not place in superscript position.

Ties (U+203F-2040) in Italic font are not slanted.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Euro sign (U+20AC) has inconsistent horizontal strokes and serifs across font variants.  Although official Euro currency symbol has diagonal stroke terminators, the symbol used in the font is not meant to be an exact replica of the official symbol, nor the glyph needs to be an exact replica to be uniquely recognizable.  In fact, Euro sign in FreeMono does not have diagonal stroke terminators.  Latin capital letter C should be based on the respective glyphs used in Basic Latin area, for all font variants.  Lengths of horizontal strokes should be the same across variants.

Guarani sign (U+20B2) looks like Cedi sign instead of Latin capital G with vertical stroke.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

The script glyphs and planck constants in Letterlike Symbols (U+2100-214F) in the non-italic fonts do not fit the design characteristic of the font.  The glyphs in non-italic fonts should be strighten up.

The bold versions of script and black-letter glyphs (U+2100-214F) have different stroke paths from the non-bold counterparts.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Double-struck capital letters (U+2102, U+210D, U+2115, U+2119-211A) only have the double-struck effect on some vertical strokes, making the glyphs harder to differentiate.  To improve legibility, the vertical strokes should be hollowed instead of adding vertical bar to base glyph.

Care of (U+2105) shows blank space instead of actual glyph.

Sound recording copyright (U+2118), trade mark sign (U+2122), Estimated symbol (U+212E) in italic fonts is not slanted.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Inverted ohm sign (U+2127) in BoldItalic font is incorrectly placed outside the font grid.

Glyphs in Arrows region (U+2190-21FF) in BoldItalic font are not slanted.

Partial differential (U+2202) in non-bold fonts are equally slanted, which do not fit the designs in the rest of the respective fonts.  The glyph in Bold font is more slanted than the BoldItalic font.

Mathematical operators (U+2206-22FF) for italic fonts, except infinity (U+221E) and integrals (U+222B-222F), are not slanted.

N-Ary summation (U+2211) in all font variants have the same weight, which do not fit the designs in the rest of the respective fonts.

Square root (U+221A) in italic variants look exactly the same as the non-italic versions, which do not fit the designs in the rest of the respective fonts.  The bug does not exist in other font families.

Integral (U+222B) in bold font is slanted instead of upright.

Half integrals (U+2320-2321) do not reach their respective character cell vertical margins, which can cause equation editors to leave a gap when constructing large integral symbol.

Box drawings dashes (U+2504-250B) have blank glyphs instead of actual dashes.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.  In additions, the glyphs are wider than other box drawing glyphs.

Left one quarter block (U+258E) in bold font, left one eighth block (U+258F) in bold and medium fonts, right one eighth block (U+2595) in bold and medium fonts have incorrectly wider right margins than the other block glyphs of the same class.

Lozenge (U+25CA) in italic fonts is not slanted.

Dotted circle (U+25CC) has dashed circle instead of dotted circle.  The bug does not exist in other font variants.

Reversed rotated floral heart bullet (U+2619) is not reversed.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Pluto (U+2647) has sans serif PL ligature instead of serif PL, which does not fit the design characteristics of the font.

Pisces (U+2653) does no have horizontal stroke go through the curves.  The bug does not exist in other font variants and families.

Black diamond minus X (U+2756) has outermost diamond edges curved inwards.

Glyphs in CJK Symbols and Punctuation (U+3000-303F), Hiragana (U+3040-309F), Katakana (U+30A0-30FF) regions in all font variants have higher base line than the rest of the font.  In addition, the bold glyphs have the same weight as the regular font.

Ideographic comma (U+3001), ideographic full stop (U+3002), ditto mark (U+3003), ideographic iteration mark (U+3005), left angle bracket (U+3008), right angle bracket (U+3009), left angle double bracket (U+300A), right angle double bracket (U+300B), left corner bracket (U+300C), right white bracket (U+300D), left white corner bracket (U+300E), right white corner bracket (U+300F), left black lenticular bracket (U+3010), right black lenticular bracket (U+3011), left tortoise shell bracket (U+3014), right tortoise shell bracket (U+3015), combining katakana-hiragana voiced sound mark (U+3099), katakana-hiragana voiced sound mark (U+309B) have wider than normal horizontal margins.  Because the font is proportionally spaced, horizontal margins of these glyphs should be made proportional, as in the rest of the font.  However, U+3099 is intended to be used for glyph compositing purpose, so this glyph should have the same width as the rest of the full-width kana glyphs.

Ideographic number zero (U+3007) is incorrectly drawn as ellipse.

Small letters in Hiragana (U+3040-309F), Katakana (U+30A0-30FF) regions in all font variants occupy same widths as the full-sized counterpart, which does not fit the design in the rest of the font.  Because the font is proportionally spaced, horizontal margins of these glyphs should be same as the rest of the font.

Glyphs in Hiragana (U+3040-309F), Katakana (U+30A0-30FF) regions in all font variants have higher baselines than the rest of the font.  These characters should be treated as characters in Block Elements region, but the baseline of these glyphs should be between the baseline for Latin characters and the bottom margin of Latin descender.

Bold glyphs in Hiragana (U+3040-309F), Katakana (U+30A0-30FF) regions do not have heavier weights.

There are 12-40 glyphs assigned to Private Use Area (U+E000-F8FF) in each font variant, which do not serve any useful purposes.  These characters should be unassigned, and the source glyphs should be removed if they are not used by other assigned characters in any way.

Arabic ligature allah isolated form (U+FDF2) has unusually wide left margin.  Furthermore, the glyph is incorrectly placed outside the font grid.  The bugs do not exist in other font variants and families.

Replacement character (U+FFFD) in all font variants uses FreeSans Medium question mark instead of the glyph from its own font.  Consequentially, the question marks in all bold fonts do not have heavier weights, and the glyphs in italic fonts are not slanted.

General
-------

The fonts are currently not hinted, making them look distorted at under 36 points or under, and strokes in glyphs disappear at 12 (18 in some cases) points or under.  This make the fonts unsuitable for screen use, or any application requiring small font sizes.  The fonts should at least be hinted with FontForge's Autohint first.

Apparantly the encoding tables of Free Sans and Free Serif are not properly set, which causes Windows Font Viewer to show square blocks in font preview.  It does not affect bold and italic variants of the fonts.

The MES conformance tests used in the source is out of date.  Even though the code ranges are the same, number of glyphs specified by the pages required to comply with each MES level are increased as a result of Unicode updates.  This causes current fonts to fail MES tests.

The line heights of all 3 families are taller than the free URW fonts for which the free UCS fonts are based.  The line heights are also taller than Arial Unicode, which itself is taller than Arial, Courier New, and Times New Roman.  The extra heights only serve to reduce the number of characters that can fit in a screen.  Besides, the extra margins are not needed to fit the glyphs with accents (including multiple-accented Latin Extended Additional/B and Greek Extended glyphs), it only needs compressed double-height accents to fit the gap.  Screen estate aside, characters such as top half integral (U+2320), bottom half integral (U+2321), summation top (U+2322), summation bottom (U+2323), are no longer connected when arranged vertically; glyphs in Box Drawing (U+2500-257F) and Block Elements (U+2580-259F) do not function like they supposed to, which can prevent equation editors and monospaced applications from working properly.

Currently the amount of symbols across font families are not the same, which is unusual since unlike letters, the stylings of symbols do not tend to change across font families.  Affected regions include Combining Diacritical Marks for Symbols, Letterlike Symbols, Arrows, Mathematical Operators, Miscellaneous Technical, Optical Character Recognition, Box Drawing, Block Elements, Geometric Shapes, Miscellaneous Symbols, Dingbats, Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A, Supplemental Arrows-A, Braille Patterns, Supplemental Arrows-B, Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-B, Supplemental Mathematical Operators, Supplemental Punctuation, Yijing Hexagram Symbols.  Some of the missing symbols can be found in IPA Mona Font, Kochi Gothic/Mincho, which also include glyphs for Enclosed Alphanumerics, CJK Symbols and Punctuation, Enclosed CJK Letters and Months, CJK Compatibility.

In each font family, the development of the regular font is way far ahead of the bold and italic counterparts.  Furthermore, the character set being covered between families are inconsistent.  To fast track the synchronization of glyphs across the font family, UCS source should start building automated scripts that generate different font weights and styles from the base font, and glyphs that can be created by using other glyphs within the same font.  Currently Free Monospaced Oblique and Free Serif Oblique contain only slanted glyphs of the base font, so that shouldn't be too difficult for them.  A long term solution is to have source glyphs built on strokes formats like Metafont, SVG, or Type 3, which allows font developers to create glyphs of multiple styles, weights, and widths simply by writing the strokes with pen or mouse, then use algorithms to transform the strokes into font families of choice.  In addition, stroke based fonts are easier to maintain even within a font family, simply because fewer control points are needed to represent a glyph.  Fortunately, FontForge can handle Type 3 and SVG strokes, but the Metafont sources used by the project need to be converted to Type 3 or SVG first.

Apparently the Free UCS Font families are missing text descriptions describing the fonts' characteristics, which are necessary to build proper glyphs for a font family, especially glyphs for other languages.  Here are some suggestions for the base fonts:

FreeMono: A serif fixed width font with fixed light font weight, rounded stroke terminator.

FreeSans: A serif proportional width font with fixed medium font weight, with vertical or horizontal flat stroke terminator.

FreeSerif: A serif proportional width font with light horizontal and heavy vertical font weights, with  flat, rounded, or pointed stroke terminator.

Documentation
-------------

The documentation incorrectly referred that the fonts are not anymore available on the Web. Last time I checked, the fonts have been hosted in SourceForge site after Microsoft had yanked them out of its own corporate pages.  And thanks to file sharing networks, the core fonts, as well as the later versions of these fonts (including Windows Vista counterparts) and more, are perpetually available somewhere in the web.

I know there are legal and moral issues involved, and I do believe in software freedom, and really hate to see this and many other free software projects have become the perpetual underdogs.  But the truth is, the existing arguments are not going to help developing UCS fonts, when the non-free products can be obtained very easily with almost zero chances of getting caught (in fact, in countries like Canada, it isn't even illegal to download copyright infringing materials), and the current free UCS fonts simply can't compete in quality.  Also, unlike other software, the core fonts are relatively maintenance free, so there is little chance of someone calling Microsoft over the font's incompatibility (even if there are, the source of the faults are mostly anything but the fonts themselves).  If that's not bad enough, there are active user groups that mix, match, and hack proprietary fonts with zero regards to EULA, which in itself has questionable legal enforceability (though in this case, there may also be issues of legality of knock-off fonts).

At best, your existing arguments are only relevant to corporate entities, who have much less chance of escaping infringement lawsuits.  But for them, cost of paying for fonts are relatively trivial, especially when they are more capable to obtain volume discounts than average end users while obtaining some, even if limited, degrees of support. On the other hand, Free UCS Outline Fonts come with no warranty.  Combining with the fact that Free UCS fonts are not popular to begin with, average end users and corporate entities alike have much better chance of finding community support for the Core Fonts for the Web than Free UCS fonts ever can.

If this, or any other free software project, want to have a shot of replacing the evil proprietary software(tm) in a world of full of unrepentant freeloaders who are willing and able to get whatever software they want, virtually in anywhere, at any time, by any means necessary, it needs to compete in quality.  It is an unfair fight, but this is the kind of environment this project has to compete in.  Since current Free UCS Outline Fonts are not exactly in competitive shape, and last time I checked, it hasn't been updated for over a year, it will need some proper marketing to attract development resources.  I am not a marketer, nor do I know of any marketer I can refer you to, but I do know a key of successful marketing is to be honest.  I am not saying there are fraudulent intent involved, but claiming core fonts for the Web are unavailable on the Web when they have been hosted by SourceForge for YEARS does not sound like honesty to me. The statements need to be updated to honestly reflect the current state of the competitions, especially on technical qualities.

The other thing about marketing is, you need to send the right message to the right people.  Unfortunately, that means the freedom rhetoric your home page is boasting is more of a turn off to would be users and developers than a selling point.  That is not to say you should not advertise freedom, but rather, you should do it more strategically.  More on that later.  To attract users at the first place, you need to market pragmatic advantages over the competition.  Fortunately, the saving grace comes from the vast amount of glyphs in all 3 font families.  Free Mono has more glyphs than Courier (374 chars), Courier by Linotype (248 chars), Courier PS (253 chars), Courier Line Draw (233 char), Monotype Courier 12 (253 chars); Free Sans has more glyphs than Helvetica Roman (388 chars), Helvetica World (1862 chars), Neue Helvetica (390 chars); Free Serif currently has more glyphs and support more code pages than even the Times New Roman 5.00 (Windows Vista version) (2790 chars), CG Times (249 chars), Times Std Roman (408 chars), Times Europa (253 chars).  It is time to exploit these advantages against similar proprietary fonts for all they worth.  However, keep in mind that quantity of characters are not the only benchmark of superiority, especially when the FreeFont families have uneven distributions of glyphs across variants.  It is just a gateway to attract developers into refining the fonts in other areas, before the temporary edge is gone.

When dealing with fonts that need progress to catch up against the latest proprietary counterparts, the homepage should include progress chart, to inform users of the progress towards beating the competition, to gain the impressions this project is capable to compete against commercial foundries.

When dealing with freedom issue, remember that end users usually do not get hit by much, because they can simply get the non-free fonts with ease and virtually no consequences.  This message should be targeted to corporate customers, because they are the ones who cannot get away with copyright infringements.  In the project homepage, information on freedom should put into a separate section, for corporate users.  However, unless there is an active community for the Free UCS scalable fonts project, this particular feature should be in the footnote section, because you can't back up these users unless the font can compete in quality against the oppositions, and you can't compete against proprietary counterparts unless there is an active development community rather than the divided efforts in current state.

I hope that helps giving the project a clearer direction for it to develop.

Anonymous

 

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Carbon-Copy List
  • -email is unavailable- added by hperon (Posted a comment)
  • -email is unavailable- added by Stevan_White
  • -email is unavailable- added by Stevan_White (Updated the item)
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    Follow 5 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2010-09-19 Stevan_White StatusIn Progress Done
        Open/ClosedOpen Closed
    2008-04-20 Stevan_White StatusNone In Progress
        Carbon-Copy- Added -email is unavailable-
    2008-02-24 Stevan_White Assigned toNone Stevan_White

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