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Unified Font Object

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Unified Font Object (UFO)
Filename extension
.ufo, .ufoz
Developed byTal Leming, Just van Rossum, Erik van Blokland, Ben Kiel, Frederik Berlaen
Initial releaseUFO 1
Latest release
UFO 3
Type of format macOS Package, XML, Property List
Free format?Yes
Websitehttp://unifiedfontobject.org

The Unified Font Object (UFO) is an XML-based source file format for digital fonts. It was created by Tal Leming, Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland.[1] Contributors to the format also include Ben Kiel and Frederik Berlaen.[1] According to its creators, the UFO is a "future proof" open format that is designed to be "application independent", "human readable and human editable".[2]

History

The idea for the Unified Font Object originated with a customized version of the font editor Fontographer 3.5.[3] Petr van Blokland, together with Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland, and with assistance from David Berlow and Steven Paul of the Font Bureau, created and distributed on a subscription basis a customized version of Fontographer called RoboFog in 1996.[3][4] RoboFog allowed users to script in Python, a language Just's brother Guido van Rossum invented two years prior in 1994.[3][4][5] The tool became very popular among type designers because of the ability to automate tasks.[4]

In 1998, rival font editor developer FontLab added Python to version 2.0 of their application, partially due to the popularity of RoboFog.[3] On March 24, 2001, Apple released Mac OS X 10.0, a major rewrite of the Mac operating system.[6] Fontographer was by then too old to be ported to Mac OS X, so the RoboFog developers turned their attention to FontLab.[4]

In February, 2003, at the TypoTechnica conference in Heidelberg, van Rossum, van Blokland and Baltimore-based designer Tal Leming combined their existing scripts which used the FontLab API into a Python module called RoboFab.[5][7] The group started going by the name, "The RoboFab Consortium".[5] With RoboFab came a need for an interchange file format for transferring font data between RoboFog and FontLab.[3] In April, 2003, van Rossum started work on an XML-based file format for glyph data called the "Glyph Interchange Format (GLIF).[7] In July, 2003, the group started work on the first UFO file format (later known as "UFO 1"), which used "GLIF for glyph information and Apple's .plist (also XML based and entirely cross platform) for any other data as listings, indices, etc."[7] The group intended to present it at the 2003 RoboThon conference in The Hague, but its launch was delayed until March 14, 2004.[5][7]

The first UFO format ("UFO 1") was written by Tal Leming, Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland in 2004,[2] and presented to the public at the Robothon conference, held in The Hague in 2005. Since then there have been 2 revisions to the format, with version 3 ("UFO 3") being the most stable version, and version 4 ("UFO 4") in progress.[2]

In 2012, Tal Leming was named “Benevolent Dictator for life” of the UFO format.[8]

Technical format

On macOS, the UFO appears as a package; a file system directory that presents as a single file. On Windows and other operating systems, it appears as a file system directory.

Most files in the UFO are XML-based Property List files. A notable exception is for files containing glyph outline data, which are in an XML-based format called "Glyph Interchange Format (GLIF)".[9] These files have a filename extension of ".glif".[9] GLIF files can describe glyph Bézier curves in cubic or quadratic formats.[10]

Use in programming

The UFO file format translates easily to object-based representation[11] in code.

Reception

The font editing program RoboFont uses UFO as its only source file format.[8][12] Other font editing programs, such as Glyphs,[8][13] FontLab[14] and FontForge[15] can read and write the UFO format natively.

The UFO format is a popular choice among open source font projects because the XML-based format is compatible with version control systems like Git.[16] Open source font projects that have used UFO as their main format include Source Sans Pro, Source Code Pro, and Source Serif Pro by Adobe Originals, and the IBM Plex superfamily. Parts of the Noto fonts project are available in the UFO format.[17]

A common criticism of the format is that its structure (of sometimes hundreds of files) does not work well with online file hosting services like Dropbox.[18] This criticism led to the proposal and adoption of the "UFOZ" format, which is a UFO (version 3 and up) compressed into a ZIP archive.[19] The first tool to use UFOZ as a format was the vfb2ufo conversion tool, created by FontLab Ltd in 2014.[20]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Contributors". unifiedfontobject.org. Archived from the original on 2021-11-05. Retrieved 2021-11-05.
  2. ^ a b c "Overview". unifiedfontobject.org. Archived from the original on 2021-11-05. Retrieved 2021-11-05.
  3. ^ a b c d e Arista, Roberto (Autumn 2016). "RoboTools: L'influenza dell'open source sugli strumenti di produzione del carattere tipografico" [RoboTools: The influence of open source on typeface production tools]. Progetto Grafico 30 (in Italian and English). AIAP Edizioni: 33–39.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  4. ^ a b c d Middendorp, Jan (2004). Dutch type. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. p. 187. ISBN 90-6450-460-1. OCLC 54880333.
  5. ^ a b c d Kiel, Ben (May 4, 2005). "An Introduction to RoboFab". Typographica. Archived from the original on 2022-02-21. Retrieved 2022-02-21. {{cite web}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 2022-02-15 suggested (help)
  6. ^ Siracusa, John (2001-04-02). "Mac OS X 10.0". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 2022-02-21. Retrieved 2022-02-21.
  7. ^ a b c d "RoboFab Release History". web.archive.org. 2008-10-04. Retrieved 2022-02-21.
  8. ^ a b c "Robothon 2012, RoboHint, and the Gerrit Noordzij Prize". Typographica. Retrieved 2022-02-14.
  9. ^ a b "Glyph Interchange Format". unifiedfontobject.org. Retrieved 2022-02-14.
  10. ^ "UFO: Unified Font Object". luc.devroye.org. Retrieved 2022-02-14.
  11. ^ Beckmann, Tom (2019). The font engineering platform collaborative font creation in a self-supporting programming environment. Justus Hildebrand, Corinna Jaschek, Eva Krebs, Alexander Löser, Marcel Taeumel, Tobias Pape. Potsdam. p. 72. ISBN 978-3-86956-464-7. OCLC 1169672607.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  12. ^ RoboFont. "Welcome to RoboFont!". robofont.com. Archived from the original on 2021-11-05. Retrieved 2021-11-05.
  13. ^ "Working with UFO | Glyphs". glyphsapp.com. Archived from the original on 2021-11-05. Retrieved 2021-11-05.
  14. ^ "Font Formats". help.fontlab.com. Archived from the original on 2021-11-05. Retrieved 2021-11-05.
  15. ^ "Technical Bulletin: UFO 3 Export". fontforge.org. Archived from the original on 2021-11-05. Retrieved 2021-11-05.
  16. ^ "LWN.net Weekly Edition for August 29, 2013 [LWN.net]". lwn.net. Archived from the original on 2021-11-05. Retrieved 2021-11-05.
  17. ^ Liputan6.com (2020-11-25). "Inisiatif Google Melestarikan Bahasa Terancam Punah Lewat Noto Font". liputan6.com (in Indonesian). Retrieved 2021-11-05.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  18. ^ Simonson, Mark (2014-06-12). "I didn't quite realize until recently: .ufo + Dropbox kind of sucks". @marksimonson. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  19. ^ "UFO 3". unifiedfontobject.org. Retrieved 2022-01-20.
  20. ^ "FontLab Blog Free vfb2ufo font converter - FontLab Blog". web.archive.org. 2015-03-30. Retrieved 2022-01-20.

Category:XML-based standards Category:Font formats Category:Typography Category:Typography software

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