Configure Unicode fonts for Emacs.
- Quickstart
- Testing
- Customization
- Overview
- Minimum Useful Fonts
- Startup Speed
- Unmapped Blocks
- Emoji
- Bugs
- Free International and Symbol Fonts
- Non-free Fonts
- Chinese and Arabic Scripts
- Unicode "Scripts"
- Compatibility and Requirements
-
Make sure you have installed
font-utils,ucs-utilsandlist-utils. -
Download the
unicode-fonts.elfile, and put it somewhere Emacs can find it, e.g.~/.emacs.d/unicode-fonts. -
Remove Unifont from your system.
-
Install these fonts
- https://dn-works.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/UFAS-Fonts/Symbola.zip
- https://www.quivira-font.com/files/Quivira.ttf ; or Quivira.otf
- https://sourceforge.net/projects/dejavu/files/dejavu/2.37/dejavu-fonts-ttf-2.37.tar.bz2
- https://fonts.google.com/download?family=Noto%20Sans
- https://fonts.google.com/download?family=Noto%20Sans%20Symbols
-
Use an extended Latin font for your default face, such as Monaco, Consolas, or DejaVu Sans Mono.
-
Add the following to your
.emacsfile:(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/unicode-fonts/") (require 'unicode-fonts) (unicode-fonts-setup)
| Keystrokes | Notes |
|---|---|
| C-h h | same as M-x view-hello-file |
| M-x list-charset-chars RET unicode-bmp RET | search for eg 210x |
| M-x list-charset-chars RET unicode-smp RET | if your display backend supports astral chars |
| M-x unicode-fonts-debug-insert-block RET Mathematical_Operators RET |
M-x customize-group RET unicode-fonts RET
Emacs maintains font mappings on a per-glyph basis, meaning that multiple fonts are used at the same time (transparently) to display any character for which you have a font. Furthermore, Emacs does this out of the box.
However, font mappings via fontsets are a bit difficult to configure. In addition, the default setup does not always pick the most legible fonts. As the manual warns, the choice of font actually displayed for a non-ASCII character is "somewhat random".
The Unicode standard provides a way to organize font mappings: it divides character ranges into logical groups called "blocks". This library configures Emacs in a Unicode-friendly way by providing mappings from
each Unicode block ---to---> a font with good coverage
and makes the settings available via the customization interface.
This library provides font mappings for 233 of the 255 blocks in the Unicode 8.0 standard which are public and have displayable characters. It assumes that 6 Latin blocks are covered by the default font. 16/255 blocks are not mapped to any known font.
To use unicode-fonts, place the unicode-fonts.el file somewhere
Emacs can find it, and add the following to your ~/.emacs file:
(require 'unicode-fonts)
(unicode-fonts-setup)See important notes about startup speed below.
To gain any benefit from the library, you must have fonts with good Unicode support installed on your system. If you are running a recent version of OS X or Microsoft Windows, you already own some good multi-lingual fonts, though you would do very well to download and install the six items below:
From https://dejavu-fonts.github.io/Download.html
DejaVu Sans, DejaVu Sans Mono
From https://www.quivira-font.com/downloads.php
Quivira
From https://dn-works.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/UFAS-Fonts/Symbola.zip
Symbola
From https://www.google.com/get/noto/
Noto Sans, Noto Sans Symbols
It is also recommended to remove GNU Unifont from your system. Unifont is very useful for debugging, but not useful for reading.
The default options favor correctness and completeness over speed, and can add many seconds to initial startup time in GUI mode.
However, when possible a font cache is kept between sessions. If you have persistent-soft.el installed, when you start Emacs the second time, the startup cost should be negligible.
The disk cache will be rebuilt during Emacs startup whenever a font is added
or removed, or any relevant configuration variables are changed. To increase
the speed of occasionally building the disk cache, you may use the
customization interface to remove fonts from unicode-fonts-block-font-mapping
which are not present on your system.
On the assumption that an extended Latin font such as Monaco, Consolas, or DejaVu Sans Mono is already being used for the default face, no separate mappings are provided for the following Unicode blocks:
Basic Latin
Latin Extended Additional
Latin Extended-A
Latin Extended-B
Latin-1 Supplement
Spacing Modifier Letters
though some of these remain configurable via customize.
Color Emoji are enabled by default when using the Native Mac port on OS X. This can be disabled by customizing each relevant mapping, or by turning off all multicolor glyphs here:
M-x customize-variable RET unicode-fonts-skip-font-groups RET
Calling set-fontset-font can easily crash Emacs. There is a
workaround, but it may not be sufficient on all platforms.
Tested on Cocoa Emacs, Native Mac Emacs, X11/XQuartz,
MS Windows XP.
Widths of alternate fonts do not behave as expected on MS Windows. For example, DejaVu Sans Mono box-drawing characters may use a different width than the default font.
Free fonts recognized by this package may be downloaded from the following locations. For any language, it is increasingly likely that Noto Sans provides coverage:
From https://www.google.com/get/noto/
Noto Sans and friends ; 181 Unicode blocks and counting; sole
; source for these blocks:
;
; Bamum / Bamum Supplement / Kaithi
; Mandaic / Meetei Mayek Extensions
; Sundanese Supplement
;
; Also a good source for recently-added
; glyphs such as "Turkish Lira Sign".
From https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=CharisSIL_download
or https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=DoulosSIL_download
Charis SIL or Doulos SIL ; Extended European and diacritics
From https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=Gentium_download
Gentium Plus ; Greek
From https://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/ ; NOTE: site is down as of July 2015
Aegean, Aegyptus, Akkadian ; Ancient languages
Analecta ; Ancient languages, Deseret
Anatolian ; Ancient languages
Musica ; Musical Symbols
Nilus ; Ancient languages
From https://www.wazu.jp/gallery/views/View_MPH2BDamase.html
MPH 2B Damase ; Arabic, Armenian, Buginese, Cherokee, Georgian,
; Glagolitic, Hanunoo, Kharoshthi, Limbu, Osmanya,
; Shavian, Syloti Nagri, Tai Le, Thaana
From https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=NamdhinggoSIL
Namdhinggo SIL ; Limbu
From https://wenq.org/wqy2/index.cgi?FontGuide
WenQuanYi Zen Hei ; CJK (Simplified Chinese)
From https://babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/
BabelStone Han ; CJK (Simplified Chinese)
BabelStone Phags-pa Book ; Phags-pa
BabelStone Modern ; Tags / Specials / Selectors
From https://vietunicode.sourceforge.net/fonts/fonts_hannom.html
HAN NOM A, HAN NOM B ; CJK (Nôm Chinese)
From https://kldp.net/projects/unfonts/
Un Batang ; CJK (Hangul)
From https://sourceforge.jp/projects/hanazono-font/releases/
Hana Min A, Hana Min B ; CJK (Japanese)
From https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=SILYi_home
Nuosu SIL ; CJK (Yi)
From https://www.daicing.com/manchu/index.php?page=fonts-downloads
Daicing Xiaokai ; Mongolian
From https://www.library.gov.bt/IT/fonts.html
Jomolhari ; Tibetan
From https://www.thlib.org/tools/scripts/wiki/tibetan%20machine%20uni.html
Tibetan Machine Uni ; Tibetan
From https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=Padauk
Padauk ; Myanmar
From https://code.google.com/p/myanmar3source/downloads/list
Myanmar3 ; Myanmar
From https://www.yunghkio.com/unicode/
Yunghkio ; Myanmar
From https://code.google.com/p/tharlon-font/downloads/list
TharLon ; Myanmar
From https://sourceforge.net/projects/prahita/files/Myanmar%20Unicode%20Fonts/MasterpieceUniSans/
Masterpiece Uni Sans ; Myanmar
From https://sarovar.org/projects/samyak/
Samyak ; Gujarati, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil
From https://software.sil.org/annapurna/download/
Annapurna SIL ; Devanagari
From https://guca.sourceforge.net/typography/fonts/anmoluni/
AnmolUni ; Gurmukhi
From https://brahmi.sourceforge.net/downloads2.html
Kedage ; Kannada
From https://www.omicronlab.com/bangla-fonts.html
Mukti Narrow ; Bengali
From https://www.kamban.com.au/downloads.html
Akshar Unicode ; Sinhala
From https://tabish.freeshell.org/eeyek/download.html
Eeyek Unicode ; Meetei Mayek
From https://scripts.sil.org/CMS/scripts/page.php?&item_id=Mondulkiri
Khmer Mondulkiri ; Khmer
From https://www.laoscript.net/downloads/
Saysettha MX ; Lao
From https://www.geocities.jp/simsheart_alif/taithamunicode.html
Lanna Alif ; Tai Tham
From https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=DaiBannaSIL
Dai Banna SIL ; New Tai Lue
From https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=TaiHeritage
Tai Heritage Pro ; Tai Viet
From https://sabilulungan.org/aksara/
Sundanese Unicode ; Sundanese
From https://www.amirifont.org/
Amiri ; Arabic (Naskh)
From https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=Scheherazade
Scheherazade ; Arabic (Naskh)
From https://www.farsiweb.ir/wiki/Persian_fonts
Koodak ; Arabic (Farsi)
From https://openfontlibrary.org/font/ahuramazda/
Ahuramzda ; Avestan
From https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=AbyssinicaSIL
Abyssinica SIL ; Ethiopic
From https://www.bethmardutho.org/index.php/resources/fonts.html
Estrangelo Nisibin ; Syriac
From https://www.evertype.com/fonts/nko/
Conakry ; N'ko
From https://uni.hilledu.com/download-ribenguni
Ribeng ; Chakma
From https://www.virtualvinodh.com/downloads
Adinatha Tamil Brahmi ; Brahmi
From https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/freefont/
FreeMono, etc (FreeFont) ; Kayah Li (and others)
From https://ulikozok.com/aksara-batak/batak-font/
Batak-Unicode ; Batak
From https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=Mingzat
Mingzat ; Lepcha
From https://phjamr.github.io/lisu.html#install
https://phjamr.github.io/miao.html#install
https://phjamr.github.io/mro.html#install
Lisu Unicode ; Lisu
Miao Unicode ; Miao
Mro Unicode ; Mro
From https://scholarsfonts.net/cardofnt.html
Cardo ; Historical Languages
From https://sourceforge.net/projects/junicode/files/junicode/
Junicode ; Historical Languages
From https://www.evertype.com/fonts/vai/
Dukor ; Vai
From https://sourceforge.net/projects/zhmono/
ZH Mono ; Inscriptional Pahlavi / Parthian
From https://culmus.sourceforge.net/ancient/index.html
Aramaic Imperial Yeb ; Imperial Aramaic
From https://www.languagegeek.com/font/fontdownload.html
Aboriginal Sans ; Aboriginal Languages
Aboriginal Serif
From https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=EzraSIL_Home
Ezra SIL ; Hebrew
From https://www.evertype.com/fonts/coptic/
Antinoou ; Coptic / General Punctuation
From https://apagreekkeys.org/NAUdownload.html
New Athena Unicode ; Ancient Languages / Symbols
From https://markmail.org/thread/g57mk4sbdycblxds
KhojkiUnicodeOT ; Khojki
From https://github.com/andjc/ahom-unicode/tree/master/font
AhomUnicode ; Ahom
From https://github.com/MihailJP/oldsindhi/releases
OldSindhi ; Khudawadi
From https://github.com/MihailJP/Muktamsiddham/releases
MuktamsiddhamG ; Siddham (note trailing "G" on font name)
From https://github.com/MihailJP/MarathiCursive/releases
MarathiCursiveG ; Modi (note trailing "G" on font name)
From https://github.com/OldHungarian/old-hungarian-font/releases
OldHungarian ; Old Hungarian
From https://tutohtml.perso.sfr.fr/unicode.html
Albanian ; Elbasan / Takri / Sharada
From https://github.com/enabling-languages/cham-unicode/tree/master/fonts/ttf
Cham OI_Tangin ; Cham
From https://ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/Asana-Math?lang=en
Asana Math ; Mathematical Symbols
Many non-free fonts are referenced by the default settings. However, free alternatives are also given wherever possible, and patches are of course accepted to improve every case.
If you are using a language written in Chinese or Arabic script,
try customizing unicode-fonts-skip-font-groups to control which
script you see, and send a friendly bug report.
Unicode also defines the notion of a "script" as a higher-level abstraction which is independent of "blocks". Modern fonts can report their script coverage, and Emacs may also access that information. However, this library ignores scripts in favor of blocks and glyphs.
GNU Emacs version 23.3 and higher : yes
GNU Emacs version 22.3 and lower : no
Requires fonts-utils.el, ucs-utils.el
Uses if present: persistent-soft.el (Recommended)