DejaVu
CategorySerif,
Sans (sans-serif),
Sans Mono (monospace)
variants: Bold, Oblique, Bold Oblique
FoundryNone
Date created2004
Date released2004
LicenseBitstream Vera Fonts Copyright, Arev Fonts Copyright, Public Domain[1]
Design based onBitstream Vera release 1.10
VariationsSerif Condensed[lower-alpha 1],
Sans Condensed[lower-alpha 1]
Websitedejavu-fonts.github.io
Latest release version2.37[2] Edit this on Wikidata
Latest release date30 July 2016

The DejaVu fonts are a superfamily of fonts designed for broad coverage of the Unicode Universal Character Set. The fonts are derived from Bitstream Vera (sans-serif) and Bitstream Charter (serif), two fonts released by Bitstream under a free license that allowed derivative works based upon them; the Vera and Charter families were limited mainly to the characters in the Basic Latin and Latin-1 Supplement portions of Unicode, roughly equivalent to ISO/IEC 8859-15, and Bitstream's licensing terms allowed the fonts to be expanded upon without explicit authorization. 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.

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 and Charter fonts, these changes have been deeded to the public domain.[1]

Usage

DejaVu fonts can be obtained from the DejaVu project repo on GitHub. Some operating systems (OpenBSD, Solaris, Haiku, AmigaOS 4, Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and RHEL) include DejaVu fonts in their default installation,[3] 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",[4] until they were replaced in BlackBerry 10 with Slate.[5]

DejaVu Serif Bold was used by designer Jonathan Barnbrook in the promotional and packaging materials for Blackstar, the final album of English musician David Bowie before his death in January 2016.[6][7]

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.[8] (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 technical contexts, 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).[9]

One derivative of the DejaVu Sans Mono typeface, the Menlo typeface, is provided by Apple with the Mac OS X 10.6 operating system. Another is the Hack typeface, which seeks to further-optimize DejaVu Sans Mono for programming, and which is as of 2023 the default monospace font for KDE on openSUSE.

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 Experimental style

References

  1. 1 2 "DejaVu Fonts — License".
  2. ↑ "Release 2.37". 30 July 2016. Retrieved 17 May 2018.
  3. ↑ "Anti-aliasing and TrueType Fonts on OpenBSD". Frequently Asked Questions. OpenBSD. Archived from the original on 2014-04-13. Retrieved 2014-04-11.
    "DejaVu – Download". Retrieved 2013-01-16.
    "DejaVu fonts – FedoraProject". Fedora Project. Retrieved 2013-01-16.
    "Package list – openSUSE". Archived from the original on 2013-01-22. Retrieved 2013-01-16.
    "Packages included in Mandriva Linux One 2010". Archived from the original on 2013-03-06. Retrieved 2013-01-16.
  4. ↑ Halevy, Ronen (2009-08-07). "Like Those Pretty Fonts in OS 4.5+? Thank Bitstream (Bolt) & DejaVu".
  5. ↑ Kinsella, Alex (2012-07-24). "Font Changes for BlackBerry 10". Archived from the original on 2014-12-24. Retrieved 2014-12-23.
  6. ↑ "Jonathan Barnbrook: David Bowie Blackstar Cover Design". Tokyo TDC (in Japanese). Archived from the original on 2020-12-20. Retrieved 2020-12-20.
  7. ↑ "Bowie Blackstar". www.bowieblackstar.net. Archived from the original on 2019-09-28. Retrieved 2020-06-27.
  8. ↑ "dejavu-fonts/unicover.txt at version_2_37 · dejavu-fonts/dejavu-fonts". GitHub. 2016-07-14. Retrieved 2017-02-01.
  9. ↑ "Sans serif font survey results". April 2012. Archived from the original on July 31, 2012. Retrieved October 20, 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
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