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Medieval Unicode Font Initiative
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In digital typography, the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative (MUFI) is a project which aims to coordinate the encoding and display of special characters in Medieval texts written in the Latin alphabet, which are not encoded as part of Unicode.
In Medieval texts many special ligatures, scribal abbreviations, and letter forms existed, which are no longer a part of the Latin alphabet. As few of these characters are encoded in Unicode, ligatures have to be broken up into separate letters when digitized. Since few fonts support medieval ligatures or alternate letter forms, it is difficult to transmit them reliably in digital formats.
To prevent the possibility of corruption of the source texts, the eventual goal of the MUFI is to create a consensus on which characters to encode, and then present a completed proposal to the Unicode authorities. In the mean time a part of the Private Use Area has been assigned for encoding, so these characters can be placed in typefaces for testing and to speed up the later transition to the final encodings (if the project is accepted).
Various typefaces implement the MUFI or part of it, including:
- Junicode (GPL)
- TITUS Cyberbit Basic
- ALPHABETUM
- Cardo
- Leeds Uni
- Andron Scriptor
Not all fonts have a complete implementation. Additionally, Junicode and TITUS Cyberbit Basic include MUFI characters at different places, as these fonts predate the MUFI project.
