Libertine Open Fonts Project

1. – Introduction –

“Letters and fonts have two characteristics: On the one hand they are basic elements of communication and fundament of our culture, on the other hand they are cultural goods and artcraft.
You are able to see just the first aspect, but when it comes to software you’ll see copyrights and patents even on the most elementary fonts. Therefore we want to give you a free alternative: This is why we founded the Libertine Open Fonts Project.”

Philipp H. Poll

We work on a versatile font family. It is designed to give you an alternative for fonts like T*mes New Roman. We’re creating free software and publish our fonts under terms of the GPL and OFL. Please have a look at our License-paragraph.
It is our aim to support the many languages of the western background and provide many special characters. Our fonts cover the codepages of Western Latin, Greek, Cyrillic (with their specific enhancements), Hebrew, IPA, etc. Furthermore typographical features exist, such as ligatures, small capitals, different number styles, scientific symbols, etc. Linux Libertine contains therefore much more than 2000 characters. In this huge amount of glyphs there may be still small mistakes that we ask you to report for the improvement of Libertine. You may also write us, when you miss an important feature (see the section “Contribute” for details).

2. – Styles –
	Finished and ready for use in professional segments, contains kernig information, western ligatures, OpenType-Tables, small caps, etc.
	Finished and ready for use in professional segments, still in further development. Further features like above.
	A bold variant of regular.
	A bold variant of the italic.
	This is a small capital variant of regular. Each font already contains a european set of it in the private area. OpenType-capable programs can easily switch to small caps. But there is also a seperated font wich allows an easy switch for users who don’t have OpenType-support.
	Organic Grotesque (non-linear Sans-Serif) in development.

3. – OpenType –

“OpenType” is the latest magic keyword in digital typography. Microsoft and Adobe have developped a Standard which supports much more than just typesetting in a line. We won’t give you a whole abstract of opentype features, but will describe the opentype functions that we implemented into LinuxLibertine. For further information see: Wikipedia, Adobe. Unfortunately few user programs make use of OpenType-features, yet. The positive list indeed is short but a new innovative Tex/LaTex compiler has full OpenType-support: XeTex. This package is so convincing that we went off the idea of an own Libertine-LaTex-package, but want to recommend XeTex for you. Following PDF shows you the advantages and use of XeTex and Libertine: Libertine-XeTex-EN.pdf.

Table	Properties	Example
smcp c2sc	Every style of LinuxLibertine contains socalled small capitals. They are little versals that look nicely for titles, emphasizements. With these two tables you can swich versals and minuscles to small capitals.
liga hlig dlig	These tables are for ligature substitution. The liga-table is for standard ligatures, like ff, fi, fl... The hlig-table is for historic, nowadays uncommon ligatures, like st und ct. The dlig-table is for nice but not necessary ligatures as for example Qu und tz.
frac	LinuxLibertine contains some true fractures (in the form “¼”). One-glyph fractures exist for fractures with the denominator two, three, four, five, six, seven und eight. Others, like 1/10 can be composed of “1/” plus inferior 10. The frac-table is responsible for the automatic substitution of the ASCII-input (i.e. 1/2) with the real glyph “½”.
pnum tnum onum zero	LinuxLibertine contains different sets of numbers. The default use is the tnum-set, (Fig: 1st line). They are so called “table-numbers”, that are all of the same height and width. Besides there exists the same number style also as a proportional set (pnum, Fig: 2nd line), this means that the numbers have different widths. The 1 is thinner, for example, than the 8. This looks practically always better than the monospaced set, but in tables numbers would of course not be positioned in columns. In longer texts one might want to use medieval numbers (also known as minuscle numbers), which will better harmonize with the alphabetical glyphs because of their different ascenders and descenders. This number-set also exist in a monospaced variant (Fig: line 3, thin zero because of the thin monospace) and proportional set with different widths (Fig: line 4). When capital glyhs and minuscles as well as numbers are being mixed (as i.e. in Internet-addresses), it may come to mixups between O (Oh) and 0 (zero). Therefore LinuxLibertine contains two (diagonal) marked Zeros – one proportional and one tabular. The zero-table regulates the automatic substitution from normal to marked zero.
salt ssXX	These tables contain a list of stilistic alternatives (salt) or a certain set of it (ssXX). LinuxLibertine for example contains a German variant of the capital umlauts Ä, Ö and Ü, where the dots are nearer to the glyphs. These are standard since version 2.6. For all those who won’t use these glyphs not as German umlauts but as emphasized vokals (like with Ë) there is the ss01-style-set. The ss02-style-set uses more flexible forms of some capitals, as of K and R. Via the salt-table practically all glyph-varaints can be shown but need to be selected seperately. An example for this behaviur is the new German Versal Eszett, that is being used automaticly with capitalisation or small caps. Those who don’t want this, can chose that it is substituted by ss. For swiss you can also use the ss03-style-set, which substitutes all Eszetts with SS/ss.
fina	In some scripts there are special glyphs for word-endings. For example there’s a word-ending-sigma in the Greek alphabet. Because Greek keyboards have both characters available. The fina-table will only substitute the innerword-sigma against the word-ending-sigma for all languages but Greek.
sinf sups	For many scientific and engeneer’s publikations superiors (sups) and inferiors (sinf) are needed. LinuxLibertine contains all numbers as well as the whole simple alphabet in forms of superiors and inferiors. Additionally plus- und minus-glyphs etc. In contrary to the computer simulated inferiors and superiors, which i.e. “M$ Word” generates simply by down-scaling and moving (here shown in red), the optic weight of these fit to the original Libertine-glyphs and is not too light (green)!
aalt	“aalt” stands for “show all Alternatives”, this table contains all possible related glyphs for a seleced one. For examle for the a you’d be shown the superior and inferior a, the related small capital and a further alternative for the small capital...

At the end we must mention, that unfortunately most programs (also proprietary ones) don’t support OpenType yet – and but if, than just rudimentary. But we see the problem ambivalently: If the OpenType-Fonts lack, Software won’t support them and vice versa. As far as we know there are following efforts in the software-world:
XeTex (see above)
The Scribus-Developers work at a wider support. The OpenOffice-Website mentions first steps to support OTFs. The Gimp already knows automatic ligature-substitution, but more complex support of OpenType lacks because of too simple implementations in the Pango-library.
Under Windows and MacOS at least Adobe Indesign supports all in Libertine implemented functions.

4. – Specialties –
The capital Eszett or Versal-Eszett	For more than a century typographs keep demanding a versal form of the Eszett to finally get clearance in versal setting. Finally the DIN-Institut (German Normination) applied a petition at the ISO, which will derive, that in future the Versal Eszett will get a position in Unicode (at prospectively U+1E9E). LinuxLibertine has itself developed a form at the basis of Andreas Stötzner’s proposal (Signa Nr.9). Two of them exist: a capital and a small capital form (see right figure). Further information you will find at Wikipedia: Versal-Eszett.
Kerning	Kerning is standard in good fonts but how much time and effort the designer wants to spent is quite different. During the last years the standard method was to define a one-by-one Kernpair table. Now OpenType fonts can contain a more elegant solution: a kern-by-classes table where groups of similar characters are seen as one kern group. I.e. have V and W nearly the same left and right geometry. Linux Libertine contains therefore many kern pairs but it may occur in simple or old software that it doesn’t understand GPOS kerning too well.
Doublekonsonant- ligatures	The German language makes use of many doubled konsonants, which often formerly had its own glyphs in the Fraktur. These doublekonsonants have in LinuxLibertine own ligatures again. The new German orthography has abolished the 3rd-Konsonant-diminution-rule an so the German got some typographicly ugly words (like Schifffahrt). The Doublekonsonant-ligatures of Libertine will make a better form. Additionally they help the reader to registrate the glyphgroup as having just one phonetic value. Another positive consequence is the more compact word presence and the shortening of the long German word chains.
Scientific characters	Especially in the natural sciences special characters are often needed. Mathematics, for example, wouldn’t get along without the Greek letters for variable-naming. The chemistry needs equilibrium arrows regularly, biologists may need gender signs once in a while. Though you will still need a special editor to generate complex formulae, you can use Libertines scientific possibilities to set simple equations in running text.
Hinting (displaying on screen)	On optical devices the resolution is often too bad, to show glyphs in their full beauty. While printers, especially laser printers, nowadays reach 300dpi easily, PC-users still live with their 75dpi monitoring devcices. Glyphs must therefore being rasterized. A complex technique, that is called “Hinting”, can be used to show glyphs clearly also at small grades, while the glyphs metrics must be deformed to fit to the monitor’s pixels. The effect is a clearer view on screen, but the fonts looks temporarily different from the later printer-output. “Hinting” itself ist so far no real “specialty”, because all good fonts do have it, but the font designer needs good knowledge and special software, to be professional in his “hinting”. Latest Linux-Systems often have a socalled Auto-Hinter, which makes it possible to see unhinted fonts on screen quite clear nontheless. Under Windows this is somehow different. In the past TrueType-Hinting was a problem of Libertine and in Windows-programs the shape was often very negative. In the new version (since 2.7) this has fortunately changed alot (see fig.) or Wikipedia: Hint.
LinuxLibertine in Word2003 under WinXP at 11Pt. “New Hinting” since version 2.7.

5. – Manuals & Samples –
PDF-Links	Contents	Preview
Libertine’s XeTex-Documentation (max. 0.5 MB)	Manual for the use of Libertine with XeTex.
Documentation for the XeTex-Pakage (max. 5 MB)	Documentation about the Libertine-XeTex-Pakage „xelibertine“ with Unicode-Glyphtable and sample texts. Language is mainly GERMAN but most should be understandable for English-speakers as well because of English commands and the various examples.
Science.pdf (max. 200 kB)	Scientific text with special characters, numbers, ligatures, true roman numbers and letter numbers, bold/italic/bolditalic style...
Multilingual.pdf (max. 200 kB)	Multilingual poems and phrases, partly historic.
Deprecated: Libertine’s LaTex-Documentation (ca. 2 MB)	Manual of our LaTex-package with installation and usage information.
Deprecated: Glyph-List (ca. 2,5 MB)	List of all in LaTex accessable glyphs and their LaTex-command: \glyph
Deprecated: Table overview (ca. 11 MB)	Layout tables of the LaTex glyph map.

6. – License –

Our fonts are free in the sense of the GPL and OFL. In a nutshell: Changing the font is allowed as long as the derivative work is published under the same license again. Pedantics keep claiming that the embedded use of GPL-fonts in i.e. PDFs requires the free publication of the PDF as well. This, of course, is absolute nonsense, because - to our opinion - the font is not significantly changed by the embedding. To abolish the conflict some members of the FSF have written an addition to the license: the so called “Font Exception”. Our fonts’ GPL contains this font exception (since version 2.7). Since version 2.1.9 LinuxLibertine is also licensed under the OFL, which will clarify usability-conflicts. Further information about the GPL ( License text, Wikipedia ) and about the OFL ( License text, Wikipedia).

Download fonts

7. – Files –

We publish our fonts in different packages:


Universal Zip-Archives

The first of these tgz-archives contains the font files in OTF- and TTF format (“Font” in the filename). The second (“SRC” in the filename) contains the Fontforge source files. The third file with “LaTex” in the name contains our LaTex-package. Note: For XeTex the LaTex-Package is not needed, use OTF/TTF instead.
To unzip the packages you’ll need an unpacker software like 7-Zip on Windows and Mac. To install: On Windows you just copy the fonts to your C:\windows\fonts-directory. To install the fonts on Linux you can use the system tools like Kontrol in KDE. This procedure assures that all needed system files will be created, too.


Linux-Packages (RPM/DEB)

We provide own packages for some special Linux distributions, which you can download from the above linked position.

Known problems:

Under SuSE-10.0 and 10.1 the kerning information is sometimes not available. This is a SuSE-Bug which also affects other fonts, too! In OpenSuSE-10.2 this problem is fixed.
We used to provide also *.dfont-files that that people could use on their Macintosh-System if it didn’t like our TTFs (which is not our fault, because Apple’s TTF-conventions differ from MS/Adobe’s ones), but lately OS-X seems to have evolved positively.
Since summer 2007 there seemed to have been a more or less linux wide change of the font management. Since then the Underlined of Libertine is shown instead of the Regular and the Regular isn’t available anymore. There are two possibilities to avoid this fault. You can either download version 2.7 (or newer) or delete the Underlined from your system. The problem doens’t exist on Windows.
Programs that base on the Pango library show ligatures automaticly and exaggerate kerning.

8. – Links –
The author doesn’t have any influence on the contents of the linked pages.
FontForge	We’re using FontForge for our font development. It is licensed under an opensource license and a full featured editor.
Supported standards	This website of Tobias Burnus shows which Standards are supported by LinuxLibertine and provides useful information about the enconding. The page is not always up to date, though.
NEO- Keybord-Layout	An ergonomic and progressive keybord layout for the German language that offers the possibility to enter many often used special glyphs directly, i.e. the true quotation marks, n-dash and minus, the versal Eszett as well as nearly all further European special characters.
Scribus	Free DTP software. Supports also OTF-fonts under Linux, but doesn’t support OpenType tables. So kerning, ligature substitution, etc. won’t work. With the use of TTF at least kerning will work partly. A new typesetting machine shall bring the missed OpenType support, soon.
The GIMP	Free pixel graphics software with a high functionality and support of OTF and OpenType, namely GPOS-kerning and ligature substitution.
7-Zip	Free unpackager with a wide support of formats. To decompress the Libertine packages on Windows systems.
Unicode.org	Organisation that defines the international encoding tables. The website provides the tables in the form of PDF files.
XeTex	A special Tex/LaTex-compiler which understands OpenType and does automatic substitution. See also our XeTex-Documentation. Recent versions of XeTex are part of the Tex-Live- Distribution.
Berlin	“Charme of Berlin”: A small ode to the artful City of Berlin whose cultural mixture is an open space for everybody’s creativity. (Title is set in LinuxLibertine).

Forum /
Tracker

9. – Contribute –

Our project needs help. We especially look for a hinting professional. If you think you’ve got an eye for typography you can be us a great help in giving us your feedback. If you even think you’d be a good font designer, you’re welcome.
You can report bugs at the bug tracker.
If you miss something report it as a feature request. But one word: We cannot add complete alphabeths like Chinese, Japanese or Arabic, etc. And very likely we will not do whole sets of seldom used engenieer signs. Please formulate an explanation why you need this or that glyph.
You can contact us via: PhilTheLionusers.sourceforge.net

Please note: This email address has no shown to be absolute reliable. So please don’t send cryptic letters or huge attachments (>1.5MB) and use the tracker if you don’t get response after some days.

Website of the Libertine Open Fonts Project; Copyleft Philipp H. Poll, PhilTheLion at users.sourceforge.net; The Libertine Open Fonts Project publishes under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and SIL Open Font License - (OFL).

Menu

1. – Introduction –

2. – Styles –

3. – OpenType –

4. – Specialties –

5. – Manuals & Samples –

6. – License –

7. – Files –

8. – Links –

9. – Contribute –