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UniFraktur • Free fraktur font reſources

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Motivation

The goal of the UniFraktur project is providing free reſources ſo blackletter font developers can add ſmart features to their fonts. It focuſes eſpecially on covering a wide range of ſmart font technologies. Since there is no ſingle ſtandard for ſmart font technologies, compability will benefit when a font includes different technologies. Currently, UniFraktur includes OpenType, Apple Advanced Typography (AAT) and Graphite.

Blackletter fonts may ſeem outdated or even reactionary. That’s preciſely why I find a tongue-in-cheek pleaſure at combining them with the moſt advanced ſmart font technologies available. Don’t leave blackletter to the outdated and reactionary people – reappropriate it!

News

2017-03-19
New releaſe (corresponds to the former extended releaſe): Changes:
  • Fixed a problem with TTF Autohint that cauſed glyphs to be ſlightly distorted.
  • Several minor bugfixes.
2016-07-03
2016-02-21
Double releaſe:

The extended releaſe includes:

  • the preconfigured variants where certain OpenType features of UnifrakturMaguntia are ſwitched on by default, and
  • extenſive documentation by Gerrit Ansmann.
2016-02-18
New releaſe:

Changes by G. Ansmann:

  • Added preconfigured variants emulating hiſtoric typeſetting or providing modern variants.
  • The roman numerals were completely redone.
  • The lowercaſe 1 was replaced by a more frakturesque number.
  • New Glyphs: ẏ, ij́, IJ́
  • Improved horizontal metrics of capital letters.
  • Tons of tiny fixes.

Styling change: Font now hoſted locally. Is ſlower, but looks better.

2016-02-11
Styling change: The ſite and the forum no longer uſe the fonts as ſerved by Google Fonts. Inſtead, they now uſe the fonts as ſerved by Adobe Edge Web Fonts. The reaſon is that Google requires a ſubſetting, which means that required characters are not acceſſible, in eſpecial, the long ſ. Adobe, however, allows acceſſing all of the fonts’ characters. The downſide is that the fonts now require JavaScript.
2014-07-06
New releaſe:

Changes by G. Ansmann:

  • Several ſpecial characters have been redeſigned or added: ſuper- and ſubſcript numbers and from 0 to 4 and fractions containing thoſe; percent ſign; ©, ® and ™; ª and º; $ and ¥.
  • Modern variants of S, V and Y and derived characters have been deſigned (cv08–cv10, ss01).
  • New feature for replacing ſ with s (cv00, cv41)
  • New feature for replacing s with a ſwaſhleſs variant, except at the end of the word (cv20, ss20)
  • For old Czech and Slovak texts, Ǧ and ǧ with háček (caron) have been added.
2013-08-25
New releaſe:

Changes by j. ‘mach’ wust:

  • Integration of Light weight drawn by Alexei Vanyaſhin: Added to font, completed with OpenType Layout features.
  • Moved cv01 to cv11/ss11, cv02 to cv12/ss12, cv03 to cv14/ss14, clig to hlig, ſo the features are in the ſame places like in UnifrakturMaguntia.
2013-08-21
New releaſe:

Changes by G. Ansmann:

  • The characters +, −, ÷, ×, ±, = and # have been redeſigned in two variants, one for lowercaſe and one for uppercase numbers.
  • The characters -, ~, _, ¶ and μ have been redeſigned.
  • The aalt feature has been added.
  • An ſö-ligature has been added.
  • Manual kerning has been performed for moſt characters.
  • The ſ-heuriſtic for German has been improved (cv11).
  • Modern variants of k, x (2×), y, A (2×), G, K, N and derived glyphs have been deſigned (cv01–cv07, ss01) (more are to follow).
  • For old Latvian texts, łł- and ẜẜ-ligatures have been added (cv28).
  • For old Norſe texts, A and a with a ſtroke have been added.
  • Variants of uppercaſe umlauts with a ſmall e above the letter have been added (cv15).
2012-10-19
New releaſe:

Bugfix releaſe:

  • Fixed h́ (Gerrit Ansmann).
  • Fixed OpenType-Layout feature (j. 'mach' wust).
2012-10-17
New releaſe:

General overhaul by G. Ansmann is finiſhed:

  • The remaining capital letters (A, B, H–Z) have been redigitalized or redeſigned, reſpectively. With this, all letters are baſed on an own digitalization or deſign.
  • There are now hiſtorical variants of ä, ö and ü with a little e inſtead of the diereſis. Theſe can be aſſeſſed uſing U+0364 or Stylistic Set 03. Stylistic Set 04 replaces Ä, Ö and Ü with Ae, Oe and Ue.
  • Several ſpecial characters were created or improved for modern variants of the Latin alphabet, thus ſupporting: Albanian, Azerbaijani, Czech, Dansk, Dieth Syſtem for Swiſs dialects, Dutch, Eſperanto, Eſtonian, Finniſh, French, Hungarian, Iriſh, Islandic, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malteſe, Norsk, Poliſh, Portugueſe, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovenian, Sorbian, Spaniſh, Swediſh, Turkiſh, Welſh.
  • Several ſpecial characters uſed by old Czech, Slovak, Latvian and eſpecially Sorbian orthographies were added (mainly thanks to hints by F. Kaulfürſt, S. Wölke and K. Stumpf).
  • Glyphs with diacritics can now be acceſſed via combining diacritical marks.
  • Character Variants 03 gives acceſs to ſix variants of š. Stylistic Sets 5 and 6 contain variants of s-baſed ſpecial characters. Stylistic Set 07 provide variants of ď and ť with a caron inſtead of the comma.
  • Lowercaſe numbers now have kerning. Tabular upper- and lowercaſe numbers have been added.
  • Some ligatures have been added: ſb, ffj, fı, ffı
  • Some ſpecial characters have been redeſigned: €, ¢, £, *
  • Some hiſtorical ſpecial characters (moſtly units) were moved to a new font »UnifrakturSupplement«, ſince they are not fitted to the Maguntia font (and will not be before long).
  • Some minor improvements.
2012-07-26
New releaſe:

Moſtly bugfix releaſe (ſpace after ß was too large):

  • Fixed ß width (Gerrit Ansmann).
  • Glyphs: ð, ø, E, f-ligatures, remaining ligatures (Gerrit Ansmann).
  • Fixed fontlog typos (j. 'mach' wust).
2012-07-21
New Releaſes:
2012-02-11
New releaſe:

Major improvements of all Latin letters (A–Z, a–z, long ſ, round ꝛ) and their ligatures by Gerrit Ans‌mann:

  • Simplification, ſmoothing and alignment of all glyphs;
  • new hinting, including "BlueValues" (global hinting ſettings);
  • improvement of glyph width;
  • ſignificant changes to the bar height on f, k, t, long ſ;
  • ſignificant changes or new deſign of many glyphs, including: s, I, J, Æ, Œ, Ø, Þ, Ð, ø, æ, œ, /, <, >, all ligatures, all accents (except i-dot and diaereſis) and accented letters;
  • the following glyphs have been removed: ƒ, all ligatures with ſſ, ll (replaced by a kerning pair), ſch, ſs;
  • new glyphs: ſj, ij, IJ, ſeveral accented glyphs.

Overhaul of the OpenType features by Georg Duffner:

  • cv01 will turn round s into long ſ except at the ends of words – manual override: ZWNJ;
  • cv02 will turn regular r into round ꝛ after round letters and r;
  • cv03 will turn capital Ä Ö Ü into Ae Oe Ue;
  • ss01 will uſe hiſtoric ſtyliſtic variants of u U v V;
  • ss02 will uſe hiſtoric ſtyliſtic variants of i I j J;
  • hlig will turn etc. into ꝛc.;
  • dlig will turn nn and mm into n̄ m̄ (formerly hlig).

AAT and Graphite ſupport has been dropped for the normal releaſe which is intended for web uſe ſince no browſer ſupports them. In the future, a ſpecial releaſe with AAT and Graphite ſupport is planned (mainly for LibreOffice). The previous releaſe, UnifrakturMaguntia.2010-11-24.zip, ſupports AAT and Graphite.

2011-04-11
German translation; a few changes to fraktur letterſpacing; follow-up changes. The coding has been poſſible thanks to the help found at Pascal Fellerich’s page Apache Multiview – the .htaccess file I have uſed can be ſeen at unifraktur.htaccess.txt.
2010-12-14
Since there is now UnifrakturCook Font Family – Google Web Fonts, I have changed the ſite ſtyle to load UnifrakturCook through the Google Font API. Additionally, the pages on UnifrakturMaguntia and UnifrakturCook now have ſections that compare the different verſions of the reſpective fonts.
2010-12-05
Since there is now UnifrakturMaguntia Font Family – Google Web Fonts, I have changed the ſite ſtyle to load UnifrakturMaguntia through the Google Font API. Additionally, the page Unifraktur-Teſt has been deleted from the navigation ſince it has been ſuperſeeded by the Fraktur letterſpacing page.
2010-11-24
New releaſes:

Licenſe change: The fonts are now OFL only (with kind conſent by Peter Wiegel); the font names have no ſpaces in order to prevent troubles.

2010-09-18
Additional browſer teſts on the fraktur letterſpacing page:
2010-08-17
New releaſes:

The ZWJ has been added to the ligature mapping tables as appropriate, in accordance to the Implementation Notes of the “The Unicode Standard”, Verſion 5.2. Chapter 16: Special Areas and Format Characters, p. 506.

2010-08-14
New ſection to the page about Fraktur letterſpacing: Support in miſcellaneous applications.
2010-08-13
New page about Fraktur letterſpacing.
2010-07-21
New releaſes:

Theſe releaſes include the following changes:

  • The ſt-ligature is included with the required ligatures („rlig“ in OpenType, „required ligatues“ in AAT).
  • All ligatures of the OpenType „rlig“ feature are included a ſecond time in the „liga“ feature in order to achieve compatibility in applications that only recognize the latter.
  • FontForge autohinting has been added.

Additionally, there are two new pages for the fonts: UnifrakturMaguntia and UnifrakturCook.

2010-07-17
This page is now online. The recent releaſes of the fonts Unifraktur Maguntia and Unifraktur Cook can be downloaded at the UniFraktur Files on SourceForge.net. The UniFraktur-Forum (in German) is online.

Contact

You can reach me through e-mail at: j_maREMch_OVEwuTHISst@sharedTEXT-files.de.

For queſtions concerning UniFraktur, you may alternatively addreſs the UniFraktur-Forum (though it is in German, feel free to write in Engliſh).