Linux Libertine is a digital typeface created by the Libertine Open Fonts Project, which aims to create free and open alternatives to proprietary typefaces such as Times New Roman. It is developed with the free font editor FontForge and is licensed under the GNU General Public License and the

SIL Open Font License The SIL Open Font License (or OFL in short) is one of the major open font licenses, which allows embedding, or "bundling", of the font in commercially sold products. OFL is a free and open source license. It was created by SIL International ...

Characteristics

Linux Libertine is a proportional

serif In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ...

typeface inspired by 19th century book type and is intended as a replacement for the Times font family. The typeface has five styles: regular, bold, italic, bold italic, and small capitals, all of which are available in TrueType and OpenType format, as well as in source code. The OpenType version allows automatic positioning and substitution, including true fractions, ligatures and kerning. A display type variant, while similar in letter form, is lighter in weight and bears a closer resemblance to old-style types such as Palatino. There is also a complementary humanist sans-serif face, Linux Biolinum, similar to Optima or

Candara Candara is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Gary Munch and commissioned by Microsoft. It is part of the ClearType Font Collection, a suite of fonts from various designers released with Windows Vista, all starting with the letter ''C'' ...

. It is available in bold and italic styles.

Unicode coverage

Linux Libertine contains more than 2,000

glyph A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...

s and encompasses character sets such as the Greek Alphabet, Cyrillic script, and Hebrew alphabet. Additionally, it offers several

ligatures Ligature may refer to: * Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure ** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry * Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...

(such as ff, fi, and ct, and the

capital ß Capital may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** List of national capital cities * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences * Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...

). It also includes special characters such as

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...

, arrows, floral symbols,

Roman numbers Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, eac ...

, text figures, and

small caps In typography, small caps (short for "small capitals") are characters typeset with glyphs that resemble uppercase letters (capitals) but reduced in height and weight close to the surrounding lowercase letters or text figures. This is technicall ...

. The Tux mascot is included at the Unicode code point U+E000.

Usage

In 2010, Linux Libertine was adopted as an open-source substitute for the Hoefler Text typeface in the redesign of the

Wikipedia logo The logo of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia, is an unfinished globe constructed from jigsaw pieces—some pieces are missing at the top—each inscribed with a glyph from a different writing system. As displayed on the web pages of the E ...

, making it possible to localize the Wikipedia identity into more than 250 languages and character sets. The "W" character, which had previously been used in various other places in Wikipedia (such as the

favicon A favicon (; short for favorite icon), also known as a shortcut icon, website icon, tab icon, URL icon, or bookmark icon, is a file containing one or more small icons, associated with a particular website or web page. A web designer can create s ...

) and was a "distinctive part of the Wikipedia brand", had "crossed" V glyphs in the original logo, while Linux Libertine has a joined W letter shape. As a solution, the "crossed" W was added to Linux Libertine as an OpenType variant. Both the Linux Libertine and Linux Biolinum typefaces are used by the open-source design publication '' Libre Graphics Magazine''.

Derivative works

László Németh created a variant of fonts with additional Graphite font tables: Linux Libertine G and Linux Biolinum G. Both these fonts are bundled with LibreOffice as of the suite's 3.3 release, with some features added in the 3.5 release. Khaled Hosny forked the Linux Libertine font family in 2012. The fork stemmed from a lack of a matching mathematical companion font for Linux Libertine. He officially released the initial version of his fork in 2016. Due to licensing restrictions of Linux Libertine regarding the need to change the name of derivative works, he renamed his version to "Libertinus fonts". Hosny also used this opportunity to unify the various font names. Thus, Linux Libertine became Libertinus Serif, Linux Biolinum became Libertinus Sans, and Linux Libertine Mono became Libertinus Mono. His new mathematical font is called Libertinus Math. While working on the mathematical companion, Hosny fixed many technical issues of the already existing fonts. This led him to a complete fork of Linux Libertine, not just adding a complementing typeface to it. Since Linux Libertine's releases came to a halt in 2012, the actively developed Libertinus fonts are de facto a continuation of the now stalled Linux Libertine project. Khaled passed the role of maintainer on to Caleb Maclennan in 2020.

Characteristics

Unicode coverage

Usage

Derivative works

See also

References

External links