Linux Libertine is a digital typeface created by the Libertine Open Fonts Project, which aims to create free and open alternatives to
proprietary
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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
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as ...
,
Cyrillic script
The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking c ...
, and
Hebrew alphabet
The Hebrew alphabet ( he, אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewi ...
. Additionally, it offers several ligatures (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 fo ...
). It also includes special characters such as
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
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, ea ...
,
text figures
Text figures (also known as non-lining, lowercase, old style, ranging, hanging, medieval, billing, or antique figures or numerals) are numerals designed with varying heights in a fashion that resembles a typical line of running text, hence the ...
, 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 technic ...
. 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, 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 ...
) 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
Graphite () is a crystalline form of the element carbon. It consists of stacked layers of graphene. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable form of carbon under standard conditions. Synthetic and natural graphite are consumed on la ...
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.
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...
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 Internationa ...
GitHub
GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, cont ...