UnifontEX

An extended fork of GNU Unifont with a focus on high compatibility, made from the last TrueType version of GNU Unifont (15.0.06-JP, which is the most complete), merged with the last version of Upper that will successfully merge after removing the placeholders (11.0.01 Upper). I then did several compatibility steps to make it work under more environments, such as taking SEVERAL measures to make the font work in environments that only want monospace fonts (which Unifont is closer to than something like Times New Roman), as well as fixing the TeX table (among other structures, including stuff like the Panose and OS/2 stuff, among other things), activating Vertical Metrics to make Inkscape not reject it when dealing with Vertical CJKV text, and making the output TTF work best on ALL OS choices. I also used TTF2PNG by Data Beaver's Domain (plus GIMP to make it true 1bpp) to make an unabridged 1 megabyte PNG of the font, for use in situations where TrueType wouldn't make sense, as well as a BDF version also made by FontForge, and a PC-98 font BMP port of UnifontEX made by Neko Project 2 (the Wii port) from the TrueType. (This is for PC-98 emulators that expect ANEX86.BMP), and an additional Apple iOS Safari SVG webfont version has been added.

Now, what DOES adding Upper into Unifont offer?

Firstly: You gain the fancy letters intended for math but used online to make social media posts have fancier fonts. This includes Fraktur, which has its own ANSI escape code that is defined but rarely used. Those characters, and their bold versions via the bold flag, now work.

Secondly: You gain emoji from 2018 and before (nothing newer due to being forced to stick to Unifont 11.0.01 Upper as the Upper version), as well as the rest of the characters in blocks that emoji only uses part of. So yes, you get the whole Playing Cards block, the whole Domino Tiles block, and the whole block allocated to Mahjong tiles. You also get all the symbol characters that didn't get emoji status. Stuff such as U+26FF, which is in the Miscellaneous Symbols block, and just so happens to be equivalent to the Rumpus Parable Agender Pride Flag from 2014. Yes, Unicode has THREE pride flags, not two. Samsung temporarily made the character an Emoji on some Android firmwares of theirs. You get the Alchemical Symbols block, including the Sublimate of Antimony symbol, which has been co-opted by nonbinary people as their gender symbol rather than the traditional male or female symbols (which DO have emoji status). So yes, this build of Unifont features the nonbinary symbol on top of the Plane 0 stuff like the transgender symbol, the symbols for various orientations, the Rumpus Parable flag, and etc. Oh, and unlike MANY Plane 0 fonts, Unifont DOES have U+2B89, something that accidentally resembles a gender symbol in the online LGBTQ+ furry community, one that is rarely used.

Third: You get many OS symbols not in Plane 0, as well as a full set of Wingdings, Wingdings 2, Wingdings 3, and Webdings, many of which ARE emoji, and many of which are NOT.

Fourth: You get more geometric symbols and historic scripts.

Fifth: You get both modern and ancient musical notation.

Sixth: You get "Transport and Map Symbols" as part of your emoji set.

Seventh: Having emoji makes you comply with the Shift_JIS extensions made by Japanese telephone carriers.

Eighth: You can handle more obscure dingbats, as well as the Japanese ARIB captioning character set standard.

Ninth: You have more characters to work with for the purposes of Unicode art, especially when doing animated Unicode art, especially when you are dealing with more than just BW. There's more characters to derive brightness values from.

Tenth: You can view even the most esoteric Kaomoji (Japanese emoticons that aren't emoji, such as the famous table flip one), including the ones that DO use emoji in them.

Eleventh: You gain more types of enclosed letters.

Twelfth: You can pass the current version of the BLNS test (a test file for string handling).

And that's only the beginning.

As part of the compatibility focus, the x in the filename "UnifontExMono" is lowercase just in case programs looking for "Mono" to determine monospaced status want a clear distinction. Also, I chose to use no symbols or spaces in the font name to make it work better on picky systems. If your system wants variable fonts, rename the font file to have "--VF" at the end before the extension, which can be .ttf or .otf (yes, TrueType fonts can be made to comply with OpenType too. In FontForge's TTF export, I turned on the "Apple", "OpenType", "Dummy 'DSIG'", "Windows-compatible 'kern'", "TeX Table", "FFTM Table" and ALL the PfaEdit Table checkboxes, so that the font would work on as many systems as possible.) Note that "--" on Linux is what is often used for command-line arguments, so that could confuse Linux machines. Also, I chose to make the name of this version of Unifont distinct from the official version, because this is a specialized fork that diverged from non-current versions of Unifont (though not horrifically so by any means). That being said, I did take quite a few measures to keep things faithful to the original. Compatibility is key. That's why I'm keeping the OS/2 table version identical, not touching the GASP table, and etc. The goal of this project is to build on Unifont to make it even greater than it already is, and to do it one better in many ways. That's why I'm so dedicated to it.

Oh, and by the way: This is a passion project that I have worked on for the last 6 years (maybe 7), in part because I was waiting for new Unicode and Unifont versions to drop so I could see what was in them. This isn't the longest project I have done (that honor goes to two of which I have spent 8 years on), but it certainly was a long haul. I hope that my improvements help you in your endeavors.

The fun thing about UnifontEX being 16px though is that 16px on Windows is actually 12-point. Now, the MLA style guide that educators often use does not force Times New Roman, only "a readable 12-point font" (some educators will force Times New Roman, and APA DOES force Times New Roman, so don't do your papers in UnifontEX unless you have permission AND are using MLA), so, depending on the educator, you COULD write your papers in UnifontEX if you are using MLA. I mean, Unifont is exactly 12-point on Microsoft systems, it just has no subpixels at all. Also, I'm VERY sure that using emoji in your papers would be a very bad idea. Now, IF you work as, for example, a technical writer (which is the career path I am on), there is no better font than UnifontEX. It's 12-point, and it has MANY technical symbols and pictographs in it, even compared to stock Unifont. Oh, I should mention that large-print medicine bottles in the United States (or at least California) are printed at 12-point. So, 12-point is not considered an unreadable font size.

Now, I should also mention that ANOTHER thing that UnifontEX is useful for is stuff like creative writing, particularly if you are exporting to PDF. Quite a few sites with literature sections do stuff in PDF. I also use Firefox to force ALL page fonts on ALL websites to UnifontEX. Also, on Windows 11, any emoji involved that are newer than 2018 will be rendered by Segoe UI Emoji, so modern emoji DO show up.

Also, I feel like web literature would be something UnifontEX would be handy to use in, so writers could have access to technical symbols in something like sci-fi stories. I certainly know that anything I write after September 12th WILL feature this font, because it has quite a few special symbols handy for some of the things I intend to write. Now, when I'm actually working as a technical writer, I will be using a UnifontEX build in which I turn on the "No Subsetting" box in FontForge, meaning that apps like Word will never subset the font. At that point, I could afford the storage overhead, and it would allow collaborators who do not have the font to work with the document. However, I DO know that quite a few existing sites DO cap PDF size, so to avoid possible bugs on your end, the UnifontEX released here does not have that box checked, so have no fear of oversized files.

Now, I'm stating the obvious here, but if you integrate this into whatever you do, avoid doing something with it that would truly enrage the FSF. When in doubt, ask.

Additionally: Another use I've found for this font is for boosting Unicode support on legacy systems. You even get emoji (up to 2018, but then you get Plane0 characters up to 2023, so stuff such as the Reiwa Era symbol, the Symbol For Type A Electronics, and quite a few of the extensions of certain scripts that were slotted into Plane0 are all present.) Throw this into ReactOS, and you have better Unicode support. Or you can give older-than-dirt machines better Unicode support, which can help if using InterWebPPC on a Tiger or better PowerPC Mac with a G3 or better (even a Power Mac 7500 can be coaxed into running a Mac OS X version that will work, but it will be slow), or Basilisk XPMod IA-32 (Firefox fork) on Windows XP with a Pentium 1, or Firefox 52 + KernelEx on Windows 98, and allow the modern web to be more browsable on older machines, especially if emoji is involved.

Also, now your terminal and IDE can support Unicode better, which can definitely help when localizing stuff.

I also wish to make clear that the lead maintainer of GNU Unifont is fine with my UnifontEX efforts.