WAZU JAPAN's Gallery of Unicode Fonts

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Introduction

Vietnamese is written using an adapted form of the Latin alphabet: Diacritics are used to differentiate vowel sounds and tones.
(Historically Vietnamese was written using Han ideographs, called "chữ Hán" or "chữ nho Hán" in Vietnam.)

There are a large number of Unicode fonts that support Vietnamese. For brevity some of the font samples here are shown in groups.

Font Samples (page 1 of 2)

font sample * font information
Sample of Arial at 20pt Arial    [ show all samples ]  (arial.ttf, arialbd.ttf, arialbi.ttf and ariali.ttf)
Source: Supplied with the Windows XP SP2 (service pack 2) update. Older versions were supplied with various Microsoft products and the Smart package of Microsoft's core fonts project.
Stats: Version 3.00 has 1,674 glyphs and 909 kerning pairs
Support: Arabic script (Arabic, Ajami, Azeri, Balochi, Berber, Brahui, Kazakh, Kirghiz Kurdish, Lahnda, Jawi, Pashto, Persian, Shahmukhi, Sindhi, Uighur, Urdu, Uzbek), Cyrillic (Russian plus other Slavic and non-Slavic languages), Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Vietnamese.
Warning: Versions prior to 3.00 supported only the Arabic letters used for Arabic and Persian languages.
OpenType Layout Tables: Arabic (default, MAR)
Sample of Arial Unicode MS at 20pt Arial Unicode MS    [ show all samples ]  (arialuni.ttf)
Source: Comes with Microsoft's Office 2000, FrontPage 2000, Office XP and Publisher 2002.
Stats: Version 1.00 has 50,377 glyphs and no kerning pairs
Support: Arabic script (Arabic, Balochi, Persian, Shahmukhi, Urdu), Armenian, Cyrillic (all or most of range), Devanagari, Georgian (Mkhedruli and Asomtavruli), Greek (including polytonic and Coptic characters), Gurmukhi, Hebrew, IPA, Japanese (Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji/Han Ideographs), Kannada, Korean (Hangul only), Latin, Tamil, Thai, Vietnamese
OpenType Layout Tables: Arabic (default, Farsi, Urdu), Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Han Ideographic (default, Japanese, Chinese simplified, Chinese traditional), Kana (default, Japanese), Kannada, Korean, Tamil
Sample of Bitstream Cyberbase at 19pt Bitstream Cyberbase    [ show all samples ]  (Cyberbas.ttf from Cyberbase.zip)
Note: This is a subset of Cyberbit. It omits the Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters.
Source: Free download available from this FTP site.
Stats: Version beta 1.0 has 1,249 glyphs and 935 kerning pairs
Support: Arabic script (Arabic only), Cyrillic (Russian), Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Vietnamese
OpenType Layout Tables: Arabic (default, Arabic)
Sample of Bitstream CyberCJK at 19pt Bitstream CyberCJK    [ show all samples ]  (CyberCJK.ttf from CyberCJK.zip)
Note: This is a subset of Cyberbit. It supports just the Latin, Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters.
Note: The Vietnamese range of this font is visually identical to "Bitstream Cyberbase".
Source: Free download available from this FTP site.
Stats: Version beta 2.0 has 28,686 glyphs and no kerning pairs
Support: Chinese (Bopomofo only), Cyrillic (Russian), Japanese (Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji/Han Ideographs), Korean (Hangul only), Latin
Sample of BPG Glaho Arial V5 Big at 18pt BPG Glaho Arial V5 Big    [ show all samples ]  (BPG_Glaho_Arial_V5_big.ttf)
Note: There is also a BPG-specific font called "Arial Unicode MS" (BPG_Glaho_Arial_Unicode_MS_V5.ttf) with similar Unicode range support as BPG Glaho Arial V5 Big.
Source: Free download from either the shavlego file area or the bpgfonts file area.
Stats: Version 3.00 has 1,757 glyphs and 1,172 kerning pairs
Support: Arabic script (Arabic, Ajami, Azeri, Balochi, Berber, Brahui, Kashmiri, Kazakh, Kirghiz Kurdish, Lahnda, Jawi, Pashto, Persian, Shahmukhi, Sindhi, Uighur, Urdu, Uzbek), Cyrillic (Russian plus other Slavic and non-Slavic languages), Georgian (Mkhedruli), Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Vietnamese
OpenType Layout Tables: Arabic (...), Latin
Sample of CERG Chinese Font at 18pt CERG Chinese Font    [ show all samples ]  (cerg_chi.ttf from cerg_chi.zip)
Note: Also has significant coverage of mathematical characters.
Source: Free download from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council.
Stats: Version 3.01 has 36,701 glyphs and no kerning pairs
Support: Chinese (Fantizi/Traditional Han Ideographs including Extension A), Cyrillic (all or most of range), Greek, Latin, Vietnamese
OpenType Layout Tables: Han Ideographic (default, Chinese/ZHT)
Sample of Charis SIL at 19pt Charis SIL    [ show all samples ]  (CharisSILR.ttf [regular], CharisSILB.ttf [bold], CharisSILI.ttf [italic], and CharisSILBI.ttf [bold italic] from CharisSILversion.zip)
Note: Extensive coverage of Latin characters, phonetic extensions, and diacritics.
Source: Free download from Charis SIL Font's Home.
Stats: Version 4.002 has 3,084 glyphs and no kerning pairs
Support: Cyrillic (all or most of range), IPA, Latin, Vietnamese
OpenType Layout Tables: Cyrillic, Latin (Default, IPA, Romanian, Vietnamese, dflt)
Sample of Chrysanthi Unicode (Chryſanþi Unicode) at 19pt Chrysanthi Unicode (Chryſanþi Unicode)    [ show all samples ]  (chrysuni.ttf)
PLEASE volunteer to translate the home page of the Four Essential Travel Phrases for David McCreedy.
Source: Free download from EveryWitchWay's Chrysanthi Unicode page.
Stats: Version 3.1 has 4,383 glyphs and no kerning pairs
Support: Armenian, Cyrillic (all or most of range), Greek (including polytonic), Hebrew, IPA, Japanese (Hiragana and Katakana only), Latin, Runic, Vietnamese
Sample of Code2000 at 19pt Code2000    [ show all samples ]  (code2000.ttf)
Source: Download this shareware font ($5) from James Kass's webpage.
Stats: Version 1.16 has 61,864 glyphs and 239 kerning pairs
Support: Arabic script (Arabic, Baluchi, Kirghiz, Persian, Shahmukhi, Sindhi, Uighur, Urdu, Uzbek), Armenian, Bengali, Braille, Canadian Syllabics (all syllabaries, all characters), Cherokee, Chinese (Bopomofo only, including Extended), Cirth, Coptic, Cyrillic (all or most of range), Devanagari, Ethiopic (including supplement and extended blocks), Ewellic, Georgian (Mkhedruli and Asomtavruli), Greek (including polytonic and Coptic characters), Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Hebrew, IPA, Japanese (Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji/Han Ideographs including Extension A), Klingon, Korean (Hangul only), Lao, Latin, Limbu, Mongolian, N'Ko, Ogham, Phaistos, Runic, Syriac, Tamil, Telugu, Tengwar, Thaana, Thai, Tifinagh, Vietnamese, Yi
OpenType Layout Tables: Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Buhid, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Han Ideographic, Hangul, Hangul Jamo, Hebrew, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Latin, Malayalam, Mongolian, Myanmar, N'Ko, Tamil, Telugu, Thai
Sample of Courier New at 17pt Courier New    [ show all samples ]  (cour.ttf, courbd.ttf, courbi.ttf and couri.ttf)
Source: Supplied with various Microsoft products.
Stats: Version 2.90 has 1,318 glyphs and no kerning pairs
Support: Arabic script (Arabic, Persian), Cyrillic (Russian plus other Slavic and non-Slavic languages), Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Vietnamese
OpenType Layout Tables: Arabic
Sample of DejaVu Sans at 17pt DejaVu Sans    [ show all samples ]  (DejaVuSans.ttf, DejaVuSans-Bold, DejaVuSans-Oblique.ttf, and DejaVuSans-BoldOblique.ttf from dejavu-ttf-version.zip)
Note: The "DejaVu Sans Condensed" font is also available.
Source: Free download from DejaVu project on SourceForge.
Stats: Version 2.10 has 3,932 glyphs and 2,558 kerning pairs
Support: Arabic script (Arabic, Persian), Armenian, Braille, Cyrillic (all or most of range), Greek (including polytonic and Coptic characters), IPA, Latin, Vietnamese
OpenType Layout Tables: default, Arabic, Armenian, Cyrillic (default, Macedonian, Serbian), Greek, Hebrew, Lao, Latin (default, Dinka)
Sample of Doulos SIL at 20pt Doulos SIL    [ show all samples ]  (Doulos SIL Regular.ttf)
Note: See the font documentation for details on Private Use Area characters and advanced typographic capabilities.
Source: Free download from SIL International's IPA font page.
Stats: Version 4.014 has 3,083 glyphs and no kerning pairs
Support: Cyrillic (all or most of range), IPA, Latin, Vietnamese
OpenType Layout Tables: Cyrillic, Latin (default, IPA, Romanian, Vietnamese, dflt)
Sample of Everson Mono Unicode at 18pt Everson Mono Unicode    [ show all samples ]  (evermono.ttf)
Source: Shareware from Everson Mono.
Stats: Version 4.1.3 2003-02-13 has 4,899 glyphs and no kerning pairs
Support: Armenian, Canadian Syllabics (all syllabaries, all characters), Cherokee, Cyrillic (all or most of range), Georgian (Mkhedruli and Asomtavruli), Greek (including polytonic and Coptic characters), Hebrew, Japanese (Hiragana and Katakana only), Latin, Ogham, Runic, Vietnamese
Sample of FMBF Tahoma at 20pt FMBF Tahoma    [ show all samples ]  (FMBF_Tahoma.ttf[regular] and FMBF_Tahoma_b.ttf [bold] from FMBF_Fonts.zip)
Source: The Matenadaran website is no longer active, so the fonts can be downloaded from WAZU.JP
Stats: Version 3.05 has 2,115 glyphs and 704 kerning pairs
Support: Armenian, Cyrillic (Russian plus other Slavic and non-Slavic languages), Greek (including polytonic), Hebrew, Latin, Thai, Vietnamese
Sample of Free Mono / Free Monospaced at 17pt Free Mono / Free Monospaced    [ show all samples ]  (FreeMono.ttf, FreeMonoBold.ttf, FreeMonoOblique.ttf, and FreeMonoBoldOblique.ttf from freefont-ttf-20060126.tar.gz)
Note: Bold and italic styles support fewer characters than the "regular" font.
Source: Free download from Savannah.
Stats: Version 1.23 has 2,577 glyphs and no kerning pairs
Support: Armenian, Braille, Cyrillic (all or most of range), Greek (including polytonic), Hebrew, Latin, Runic, Vietnamese
OpenType Layout Tables: Hebrew, Latin
Sample of Free Serif at 20pt Free Serif    [ show all samples ]  (FreeSerif.ttf, FreeSerifBold.ttf, FreeSerifItalic.ttf, and FreeSerifBoldItalic.ttf from freefont-ttf-20060126.tar.gz)
Note: Bold and italic styles support fewer characters than the "regular" font.
Source: Free download from Savannah.
Stats: Version 1.52 has 3,914 glyphs and no kerning pairs
Support: Bengali, Cyrillic (all or most of range), Ethiopic, Greek (including polytonic), Hebrew, IPA, Latin, Japanese (Hiragana and Katakana only), Malayalam, Tamil, Thaana, Vietnamese
OpenType Layout Tables: default, Bengali, Latin, Malayalam (traditional), Tamil
Sample of FreeSans at 18pt FreeSans    [ show all samples ]  (FreeSans.ttf, FreeSansBold.ttf, FreeSansOblique.ttf, and FreeSansBoldOblique.ttf from freefont-ttf-20060126.tar.gz)
Note: Bold and oblique styles support fewer characters than the "regular" font.
Source: Free download from Savannah.
Stats: Version 1.76 has 2,734 glyphs and no kerning pairs
Support: Armenian, Bengali, Cyrillic (all or most of range), Devanagari, Greek (including polytonic), Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Hebrew, Japanese (Hiragana and Katakana only), Latin, Vietnamese
OpenType Layout Tables: default, Armenian, Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Hebrew, Latin
Sample of Garava at 20pt Garava    [ show all samples ]  (Garava Regular.ttf, Garava Bold.ttf, Garava Italic.ttf, Garava Bold Italic.ttf, Garava Heavy, Garava Small Caps.ttf, and Garava Small Caps Bold.ttf from the Garava.7z archive)
Source: Free download from the Association for Insight Meditation.
Note: Requires a program such as the free 7-Zip utility to extract files from the .7z download.
Stats: Version 1.01 August 6, 2005 has 1,319 glyphs and 432 kerning pairs
Support: Greek, Latin, Vietnamese
Note: Extensive coverage of Latin characters with diacritics including those needed for Sanskrit and Pali transcription.
Sample of Gentium at 22pt Gentium    [ show all samples ]  (GenR102.TTF [regular] and GenI102.TTF [italic] from Gentium102.zip)
Source: Free download from SIL International.
Stats: Version 1.02 2005 has 1,699 glyphs and 2,857 kerning pairs
Support: Cyrillic (Russian), Greek (including polytonic), IPA, Latin, Vietnamese
Sample of GentiumAlt at 22pt GentiumAlt    [ show all samples ]  (GenAR102.TTF [regular] and GenAI102.TTF [italic] from Gentium102.zip)
Note: GentiumAlt has flatter diacritics than Gentium to accommodate stacking diacritics used in languages such as Vietnamese.
Source: Free download from SIL International.
Stats: Version 1.02 2005 has 1,699 glyphs and 2,857 kerning pairs
Support: Cyrillic (Russian), Greek (including polytonic), IPA, Latin, Vietnamese
Sample of GFS Bodoni Rg at 18pt GFS Bodoni Rg    [ show all samples ]  (GFSBodoni.otf, GFSBodoniBold.otf, GFSBodoniIt.otf, and GFSBodoniBoldIt.otf from GFS_BONDOI_OT.zip)
Source: Free download from the Greek Font Society.
Stats: Version OTF1.000... has 1,177 glyphs and no kerning pairs
Support: Greek (including polytonic), Latin, Vietnamese
OpenType Layout Tables: Greek, Latin
Sample of GFS Didot Rg at 19pt GFS Didot Rg    [ show all samples ]  (GFSDidot.otf, GFSDidotBold.otf, GFSDidotItalic.otf, and GFSDidotBoldItalic.otf from GFS_DIDOT_OT.zip)
Source: Free download from the Greek Font Society.
Stats: Version OTF1.000... has 1,139 glyphs and no kerning pairs
Support: Greek (including polytonic), Latin, Vietnamese
OpenType Layout Tables: Greek, Latin
Sample of GFS Neohellenic Rg at 22pt GFS Neohellenic Rg    [ show all samples ]  (GFSNeohellenic.otf, GFSNeohellenicBold.otf, GFSNeohellenicItalic.otf, and GFSNeohellenicBoldItalic.otf from GFS_NEOHELLENIC_OT.zip)
Source: Free download from the Greek Font Society.
Stats: Version OTF1.000... has 1,140 glyphs and no kerning pairs
Support: Greek (including polytonic), Latin, Vietnamese
OpenType Layout Tables: Greek, Latin
Sample of Hindsight Unicode at 19pt Hindsight Unicode    [ show all samples ]  (HindUnic.ttf and HindUnIt.ttf)
Source: Free download from the History/Hindsight page of Darren Rigby's "Objets Dart" site.
Stats: Version 1.00 January 2001 has 2,894 glyphs and no kerning pairs
Support: Armenian, Cyrillic (all or most of range), Greek (including polytonic and Coptic characters), Hebrew, IPA, Latin, Vietnamese
Sample of jGaramond at 22pt jGaramond    [ show all samples ]  (jGara2.ttf, jGara2bd.ttf, and jGara2it.ttf)
Source: Free download from Jan Thor.
Stats: Version 1.0 has 1,848 glyphs and 498 kerning pairs
Support: Cyrillic (Russian and other Slavic languages), Greek, Latin, Vietnamese
Sample of LeedsUni at 22pt LeedsUni    [ show all samples ]  (leedsuni.ttf)
Source: Free download from Alec McAllister's home page.
Stats: Version 001.000 has 2,343 glyphs and no kerning pairs
Support: Cyrillic (all or most of range), Greek (including polytonic and Coptic characters), IPA, Latin (including many extended/additional letters and diacritics), Runic, Vietnamese, Private Use Area (Medieval Latin)
Sample of Linux Libertine at 20pt Linux Libertine    [ show all samples ]  (LinLibertine...ttf [regular, bold, italic, bold italic, and underlined] from LinLibertine....tgz)
Source: Free download from the Linux Libertine Open Fonts project.
Be sure to keep the ".tgz" file extension when downloading the archive. You can use WinZIP or similar tools to decompress and extract the font files.
Stats: Version 2.0.9 has 1,492 glyphs and 259 kerning pairs
Support: Cyrillic (Russian plus some additional letters), Greek, Latin, Vietnamese
OpenType Layout Tables: default, Cyrillic, Greek, Latin
Sample of Marin at 24pt Marin    [ show all samples ]  (Marin.ttf, MarinItalic.ttf, MarinCaps.ttf, and MarinCapsItalic.ttf from Marin.zip)
Note: Additional samples are available for this font.
Source: Free download from Mark E. Shoulson's website.
Stats: Version 001.000 has 1,971 glyphs and no kerning pairs
Support: Cherokee, Cyrillic (all or most of range), Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Vietnamese
OpenType Layout Tables: default, Hebrew, Latin
Sample of Microsoft Sans Serif at 20pt Microsoft Sans Serif    [ show all samples ]  (micross.ttf)
Source: Supplied with Windows XP SP2 (service pack 2). Older versions were supplied with Windows XP and Windows 2000.
Stats: Version 1.41 has 2,257 glyphs and no kerning pairs
Support: Arabic script (Arabic, Ajami, Azeri, Balochi, Berber, Brahui, Kazakh, Kirghiz Kurdish, Lahnda, Jawi, Pashto, Persian, Shahmukhi, Sindhi, Uighur, Urdu, Uzbek), Cyrillic (all or most of range), Greek (including polytonic and Coptic characters), Hebrew, Latin (basic and beyond), Thai, Vietnamese
Warning: IPA, Greek polytonic, Greek Coptic, and many Cyrillic characters were only added with version 1.41.
OpenType Layout Tables: Arabic (default, MAR)
Sample of Minion Pro at 20pt Minion Pro    [ show all samples ]  (MinionPro-Regular.otf, MinionPro-Bold.otf, MinionPro-It.otf, and MinionPro-BoldIt)
Source: Comes with the free download of Adobe Reader 7.0. The fonts aren't automatically installed in Windows' "Fonts" folder but can probably be found in the "Resource\Font" subdirectory of whichever directory Adobe Reader 7.0 was installed in (for example C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0).
Stats: Version 2.012 ... has 1,663 glyphs and no kerning pairs
Support: Cyrillic (Russian plus other Slavic and non-Slavic languages), Greek (including polytonic), Latin, Vietnamese
OpenType Layout Tables: Cyrillic, Greek, Latin (default, Azeri, Crimean Tatar, German, Moldavian, Romanian, Serbian, Turkish)
 

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This page was last updated on 2006-05-26