Unicode font

A Unicode font is a computer font that maps glyphs to code points defined in the Unicode Standard.[1] The vast majority of modern computer fonts use Unicode mappings, even those fonts which only include glyphs for a single writing system, or even only support the basic Latin alphabet. The distinction is historic: before Unicode, when most computer systems used only eight-bit bytes, no more than 256 characters (or control codes) could be encoded. This meant that each character repertoire had to have its own codepoint assignments – and thus a given codepoint could have multiple meanings. By assuring unique assignments, Unicode resolved this issue.

Fonts which support a wide range of Unicode scripts and Unicode symbols are sometimes referred to as "pan-Unicode fonts", although as the maximum number of glyphs that can be defined in a TrueType font is restricted to 65,535, it is not possible for a single TrueType font to provide individual glyphs for all defined Unicode characters (154,998 characters, with Unicode 16.0). This article lists some widely used Unicode fonts (those shipped with an operating system or produced by a well-known commercial font company) that support a comparatively large number and broad range of Unicode characters.

  1. ^ "Fonts and keyboards". Unicode Consortium. 28 June 2017. Archived from the original on 18 October 2019. Retrieved 13 October 2019.

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