DejaVu fonts

The DejaVu fonts are modifications of the Bitstream Vera fonts designed for greater coverage of Unicode, as well as providing more styles. The Bitstream Vera family was limited mainly to the characters in the Basic Latin and Latin-1 Supplement portions of Unicode, roughly equivalent to ISO/IEC 8859-15, but was released with a license that permitted changes. The DejaVu fonts project was started with the aim to "provide a wider range of characters ... while maintaining the original look and feel through the process of collaborative development". The development of the fonts is done by many contributors, and is organized through a wiki and a mailing list.

"DejaVu" redirects here. For the feeling that one has witnessed something previously, see déjà vu. For other uses, see Déjà vu (disambiguation).
DejaVu
CategorySerif,
Sans (sans-serif),
Sans Mono (monospace)
variants: Bold, Oblique, Bold Oblique
FoundryNone
Date created2004
Date released2.37 / July 30, 2016 (2016-07-30)[1]
LicenseBitstream Vera Fonts Copyright, Arev Fonts Copyright, Public Domain[2]
Design based onBitstream Vera release 1.10
VariationsSerif Condensed (*),
Sans Condensed (*),
(*): experimental style
Websitedejavu-fonts.github.io
Metrically compatible withVerdana (DejaVu Sans)

The DejaVu fonts project was started by Štěpán Roh. Over time, it has absorbed several other projects that also existed to extend the Bitstream Vera typefaces; these projects include the Olwen Font Family, Bepa, Arev Fonts (only partially), and the SUSE Linux standard fonts. The full project incorporates the Bitstream Vera license, an extended MIT License which restricts naming of modified distributions and prohibits individual sale of the typefaces, although they may be embedded within a larger commercial software package (terms also found in the later Open Font License); to the extent that the DejaVu fonts' changes can be separated from the original Bitstream Vera fonts, these changes have been deeded to the public domain.[2]

The project has seen no activity since about 2016 and some subpages within the website return error 404, suggesting that the project might have become abandoned.

Usage

DejaVu fonts can be obtained from the DejaVu project repo on GitHub. Some operating systems (OpenBSD, Solaris, Haiku, AmigaOS 4, GNU/Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and RHEL) include DejaVu fonts in their default installation,[3][4][5][6][7] sometimes even using them as their system fonts. These fonts were also included in the proprietary BlackBerry OS, since its version 4.5, under the names "BBAlphaSans" and "BBAlphaSerif",[8] until they were replaced in BlackBerry 10 with Slate.[9]

DejaVu Serif and Sans Mono was used in the artwork for Blackstar, the final album of English musician David Bowie before his death in January, 2016.[10]

DejaVu Serif
DejaVu Sans Mono
DejaVu Sans

Unicode coverage

DejaVu is a project which aims for complete coverage of the alphabetic scripts, abjads, and symbols with all characters that are part of the MES-1, MES-2, and hopefully MES-3 subsets of Unicode. The coverage is already considerable, although some more work is needed to include more hinting rules for clear results at small sizes. Some kerning rules are still being developed for the Sans and Serif styles, for fine typography. Some work is still also needed to create ligatures in these styles.

As of version 2.37, it included characters from the following Unicode blocks.[11] (The fraction given is the number of characters in each block that are included in the DejaVu fonts.)

Plane 0: Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP) Range: 0000-FFFF (0–65,535)

C0 Controls and Basic Latin (95/95)100% 100
 
C1 Controls and Latin-1 Supplement (96/96)100% 100
 
Latin Extended-A (128/128)100% 100
 
Latin Extended-B (208/208)100% 100
 
IPA Extensions (96/96)100% 100
 
Spacing Modifier Letters (63/80)79% 79
 
Combining Diacritical Marks (93/112)83% 83
 
Greek and Coptic (135/135)100% 100
 
Cyrillic (256/256)100% 100
 
Cyrillic Supplement (38/48)79% 79
 
Armenian (86/89)96% 96
 
Hebrew (54/87)62% 62
 
Arabic (165/255)64% 64
 
N'Ko (54/59)92% 92
 
Thai (1/87)1% 1
 
Lao (65/67)97% 97
 
Georgian (83/88)94% 94
 
Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics (404/640)63% 63
 
Ogham (29/29)100% 100
 
Phonetic Extensions (106/128)83% 83
 
Phonetic Extensions Supplement (38/64)59% 59
 
Combining Diacritical Marks Supplement (6/59)10% 10
 
Latin Extended Additional (252/256)98% 98
 
Greek Extended (233/233)100% 100
 
General Punctuation (107/111)96% 96
 
Superscripts and Subscripts (42/42)100% 100
 
Currency Symbols (26/31)84% 84
 
Combining Diacritical Marks for Symbols (7/33)21% 21
 
Letterlike Symbols (75/80)94% 94
 
Number Forms (55/60)92% 92
 
Arrows (112/112)100% 100
 
Mathematical Operators (256/256)100% 100
 
Miscellaneous Technical (136/255)53% 53
 
Control Pictures (2/39)5% 5
 
Enclosed Alphanumerics (10/160)6% 6
 
Box Drawing (128/128)100% 100
 
Block Elements (32/32)100% 100
 
Geometric Shapes (96/96)100% 100
 
Miscellaneous Symbols (189/256)74% 74
 
Dingbats (174/192)91% 91
 
Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A (9/48)19% 19
 
Supplemental Arrows-A (16/16)100% 100
 
Braille Patterns (256/256)100% 100
 
Supplemental Arrows-B (128/128)100% 100
 
Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-B (13/128)10% 10
 
Supplemental Mathematical Operators (74/256)29% 29
 
Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows (35/206)17% 17
 
Latin Extended-C (31/32)96% 96
 
Georgian Supplement (38/40)95% 95
 
Tifinagh (55/59)93% 93
 
Supplemental Punctuation (7/69)10% 10
 
Yijing Hexagram Symbols (64/64)100% 100
 
Lisu (48/48)100% 100
 
Cyrillic Extended-B (33/96)34% 34
 
Modifier Tone Letters (20/32)62% 62
 
Latin Extended-D (77/160)48% 48
 
Alphabetic Presentation Forms (58/58)100% 100
 
Arabic Presentation Forms-A (108/611)18% 18
 
Variation Selectors (16/16)100% 100
 
Combining Half Marks (4/16)25% 25
 
Arabic Presentation Forms-B (141/141)100% 100
 
Specials (5/5)100% 100
 

Plane 1: Supplementary Multilingual Plane (SMP) Range: 10000-1FFFF (65,536–131,071)

Old Italic (35/36)97% 97
 
Tai Xuan Jing Symbols (87/87)100% 100
 
Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols (117/996)12% 12
 
Arabic Mathematical Alphabetic Symbols (74/143)52% 52
 
Domino Tiles (100/100)100% 100
 
Playing Cards (59/82)72% 72
 
Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs (12/768)2% 2
 
Emoticons (64/80)80% 80
 

Styles

The 10 styles provided by the original Bitstream Vera fonts have been augmented to 21 styles:

DejaVu SansDejaVu SerifDejaVu Sans Mono
Book / ObliqueBook / ItalicBook / Oblique
Bold / ObliqueBold / ItalicBold / Oblique
Extralight
Condensed / ObliqueCondensed / Italic
Condensed Bold / ObliqueCondensed Bold / Italic

Original styles are marked in bold.

DejaVu Sans Mono

The DejaVu Sans Mono typeface in particular is suitable for exact technical purpose (target); - since it clearly distinguishes "l" (lowercase L) from "1" (one) and from "I" (uppercase i); also it clearly distinguishes "0" (zero, null) from "O" (uppercase o).[12]

One derivative of the DejaVu Sans Mono typeface; - the Menlo typeface, is provided by Apple with the Mac OS X 10.6 operating system.

Role of typographically incompatible scripts

There has recently been some question within the DejaVu community about the role of scripts typographically incompatible with the typographically similar scripts Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic (LGC). Most notably, Arabic has been added, but it has caused some software compatibility issues. Further, Latin and Arabic scripts have fundamentally different approaches to typefaces: while Latin fonts have serif and sans-serif versions, Arabic fonts have different distinctions (see Islamic calligraphy). It is still uncertain how the project should handle the mixture between different Latin faces and the different Arabic faces.

The uncertain status of Arabic and other alphabets has led to the creation of DejaVu LGC, a subset of the DejaVu fonts which contains only Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic characters. This version also tends not to experience as many software issues.

See also

References
  1. "DejaVu Fonts". Retrieved 2017-01-17.
  2. "DejaVu Fonts - License".
  3. "Anti-aliasing and TrueType Fonts on OpenBSD". Frequently Asked Questions. OpenBSD. Archived from the original on 2014-04-13. Retrieved 2014-04-11.
  4. "DejaVu – Download". Retrieved 2013-01-16.
  5. "DejaVu fonts – FedoraProject". Fedora Project. Retrieved 2013-01-16.
  6. "Package list – openSUSE". Archived from the original on 2013-01-22. Retrieved 2013-01-16.
  7. "Packages included in Mandriva Linux One 2010". Archived from the original on 2013-03-06. Retrieved 2013-01-16.
  8. Halevy, Ronen (2009-08-07). "Like Those Pretty Fonts in OS 4.5+? Thank Bitstream (Bolt) & DejaVu".
  9. Kinsella, Alex (2012-07-24). "Font Changes for BlackBerry 10". Retrieved 2014-12-23.
  10. "Bowie Blackstar". www.bowieblackstar.net. Retrieved 2020-06-27.
  11. "dejavu-fonts/unicover.txt at version_2_37 · dejavu-fonts/dejavu-fonts". GitHub. 2016-07-14. Retrieved 2017-02-01.
  12. "Sans serif font survey results". April 2012. Archived from the original on July 31, 2012. Retrieved October 20, 2012.CS1 maint: unfit url (link)
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