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github.com/google/fonts.git repo trivia

Incomplete greek-ext subsets

Open Sans (and some others, like Roboto) are advertised as they supporting Extended Greek, but choosing the greek-ext subset will not display Open Sans (or the required font) for this range because they don't actually contain the required characters. You're welcome to commission these characters, though.

Google Fonts Repo Wiki

The previous fonts Mercurial repository had a wiki at https://code.google.com/p/googlefontdirectory/wiki which is no longer available. The contents of the wiki are now available here:

https://github.com/googlefonts/gf-docs

Duplicated fonts

From time to time, families have been renamed or updated in a way that the existing styles had to change substantially. Until April 2020, the initial family was retained, creating similarly named pairs of directories and often duplicate/redundant, files. The initial families are kept in the API so that people already using them can continue to do so. They are no longer listed in the fonts.google.com catalog, or in the HEAD of the master branch, but the files still exist in the commit history.

Initial Family Current Family Category
alefhebrew alef renamed
mrbedford mrbedfort renamed
misssaintdelafield mrssaintdelafield renamed
siamreap siemreap renamed
terminaldosis dosis renamed
terminaldosislight dosis expanded
baloo baloo2 expanded
baloobhai baloobhai2 expanded
baloobhaijaan baloobhaijaan2 expanded
baloobhaina baloobhaina2 expanded
baloochettan baloochettan2 expanded
balooda balooda2 expanded
baloopaaji baloopaaji2 expanded
balootamma balootamma2 expanded
balootammudu balootammudu2 expanded
baloothambi baloothambi2 expanded
bevietnam bevietnampro expanded
spartan leaguespartan expanded
scheherazade scheherazadenew expanded
kdamthmor kdamthmorpro expanded
andikanewbasic andika expanded
gentiumbasic gentiumplus expanded
andada andadapro expanded
fredokaone fredoka expanded
gentiumbookbasic gentiumbookplus expanded
arimamadurai arima expanded
meriendaone merienda expanded
codacaption coda expanded
sourceserifpro sourceserif4 renamed
sourcesanspro sourcesans3 renamed

Missing METADATA.pb files

Fonts in Early Access do not have METADATA.pb files.

.pb vs .textproto

While .textproto is now the canonical extension for Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) text files, we have hundreds of METADATA files with the .pb extension. The inconsistency isn't a practical issue, and as we have internal tools that assume the old filenames, it isn't worth renaming them proactively.

Install on Windows

You can install all of the fonts using Windows PowerShell. Change directories to the folder where you downloaded the package, and run the following command:

$fonts = (New-Object -ComObject Shell.Application).Namespace(0x14)
dir ofl/*/*.ttf | %{ $fonts.CopyHere($_.fullname) }

3rd Party Directories

The fonts.google.com is accompanied by a Google Fonts Developer API, which provides raw data for constructing such a directory in JSON format. Here is a list of 3rd party directories:

There are also handcrafted directories with rich samples:

Rightsholder contacts

This shell command shows all email addresses for font copyright holders listed in the METADATA.pb files:

grep copyright\: */*/MET* | grep \@ |  perl -ne'if(/[\w\.\-\_]+@([\w\-\_]+\.)+[A-Za-z]{2,4}/g){print "$&\n"}' | sort | uniq

This shell command shows all the families without a contact email address:

grep copyright\: */*/MET* | grep -v \@ | cut -d\: -f1 | cut -d\/ -f2 | uniq | sort

The copyright holders of those families include Google, SIL, Adobe, Canonical, Naver, and a couple of outliers.

Articles about Google Fonts

Some interesting articles about Google Fonts:

Interesting Libre Fonts Not In Google Fonts

Here is a list of some libre fonts made for special purposes (emoji, math, icons, etc) that are not available in Google Fonts.

Where were the homepage sample texts from?

In 2016 to 2020, the Google Fonts catalog displayed one of a dozen or so different sample texts. Here they are and where they are from:

  • "A red flair silhouetted the jagged edge of a wing" – The Jewels of Aptor, Samuel R. Delany
  • "A shining crescent far beneath the flying vessel" – Triplanetary, E. E. Smith
  • "All their equipment and instruments are alive" – Mr. Spaceship, Philip K. Dick
  • "Almost before we knew it, we had left the ground" – A Trip to Venus, John Munro
  • "I watched the storm, so beautiful yet terrific" – Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
  • "It was going to be a lonely trip back" – Youth by Isaac Asimov
  • "Mist enveloped the ship three hours out from port" – The Jewels of Aptor, Samuel R. Delany
  • "My two natures had memory in common" – Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
  • "She stared through the window at the stars" – The Millionaire's Convenient Bride, Catherine George ????
  • "Silver mist suffused the deck of the ship" – The Jewels of Aptor, Samuel R. Delany
  • "The face of the moon was in shadow" – Mr. Spaceship, Philip K. Dick
  • "The recorded voice scratched in the speaker" – Deathworld, Harry Harrison
  • "The sky was cloudless and of a deep dark blue" – A Trip to Venus, John Munro
  • "The spectacle before us was indeed sublime" – A Trip to Venus, John Munro
  • "Then came the night of the first falling star" – The War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells
  • "Waves flung themselves at the blue evening" – The Jewels of Aptor, Samuel R. Delany"