this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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Typography

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Any good alternatives to DejaVu fonts? (dejavu-fonts.github.io)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/2011048

For years I've been using DejaVu fonts, but in the last years I had the feeling that this project had been abandoned. And indeed it has.

Does anyone know of good open-source alternatives?

I've heard of GNU Unifont, which seems still alive, but it isn't the kind of font one would use for, say, slides or websites.

Liberation and Kurinto were interesting (though not au par with DejaVu, in my opinion), but seem to have been abandoned as well.

I'm tired of Google and personally am not interested in fonts commissioned by them.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What exactly are you looking for?

FYI, most fonts on Google fonts have not been commissioned by them, they are aggregating a lot of independently developed open source fonts. But if your looking for other sources, check Fontsquirrel or Fontshare

And if you give me some specifics, I'd be happy to recommend some specific faces.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you so much for your availability! These are some features I've been looking for, in order of preference. I know that probably no font family satisfies all of them:

  1. Open source
  2. A monospace font should be included
  3. The family, including the monospace, should at least have Italics, bold, bold-Italics
  4. The monospace should have clearly different capital O vs zero 0, capital I vs lowercase l vs one 1
  5. The family should include maths symbols like √∫⇒∧∨¬∞∑∏∪⋃∩⋂∈∉⊢⊨∅≠∝±≈≡∂∇↦⊆⊇≪≫⊗⊕∀∃ (preferably also in boldface; italics not necessary
  6. The family should include the Greek alphabet (Italics, bold, bold-Italics), preferably with nu "ν" clearly distinct from v.
  7. The proportional fonts should not look too "fancy" – I know that's difficult because subjective. As an example, Palatino and Minion Pro are among my favourite fonts.

I'll look at the sources you shared!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Are you looking for a superfamily with sans/serif/mono? Or would sans & mono be enough?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

All three best, but also dropping either sans or serif would be OK :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ok, some suggestions (sorry, didn't bother to check the characters in the monospace)

ibm plex - sans, serif & mono

Source sans, serif & code

Fira sans and Mono, code version too

Pt fonts sans, serif& mono

Noto mega family. I know, google, but...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wow the IBM Plex family looks really amazing. How come I've never heard of it?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It's one of my favorites! Fira is also nice, and I use Fira Code for coding

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thank you once more. I didn't know the first three, will check them.

The DejaVu family was (still is in many situations) great because it ticked all those points.