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I am looking for fonts for use in an embedded GUI application with a small display and keypad.

Are there any free fonts available that people have used? What about the licenses for free fonts? Are there any special requirements for an application like an embedded GUI? For example, include the License in the source code.

Take the GNU FreeFont family fonts. The website talks about using these fonts in documents or altering them to fit your needs. If I have a way to import those fonts into my application (unaltered) and use them on my display, is that considered the same as using them to create a document with, let's say, AbiWord or OpenOffice?

Also, what are the practical differences between free (open source, e.g. GNU FreeFont), license free (e.g. Fonts from link in Mark Rushakoff's comment below) and royalty free as far as fonts are concerned?

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Not quite an answer, so here's a link to "15 license-free pixel fonts": alvit.de/blog/article/25-best-license-free-pixelfonts –  Mark Rushakoff Oct 14 '09 at 3:09
ASCII only? I'm sure it gets more complicated if you're looking for other Unicode characters. –  Craig McQueen Oct 14 '09 at 3:20
ASCII only is fine. –  cschol Oct 14 '09 at 3:46

2 Answers 2

I have had a lengthy string of emails with 'Caleb' from Adobe licensing because I wanted to use 'Myriad' for a GUI in a touch screen product. Here is my last email and his reply which contradict Nietzche-jou's answer to this topic:

Hi Caleb,

I imagine many people want to create apps for mobile phones using Adobe fonts, especially as much of the Adobe Suite is set up for this purpose (Flex, Air etc) so how do you licence fonts for use in apps to be used in mobile phones? Or do Adobe not licence their fonts for use in screen based products at all?

Thanks Corrie


At this time, we do not currently license our fonts for use in mobile apps except some very specific licenses we have created for some table devices. There are a great many iOS apps that are currently using our fonts that are using them illegally, and we are looking into what our next steps will be.


What fonts CAN a GUI designer use??

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The X11 bitmap fonts are pretty dynamite, and the licenses for them are pretty unrestrictive: briefly, the Adobe fonts (Courier, Helvetica, New Century Schoolbook, Symbol, Times) say

Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notices appear in all copies and that both those copyright notices and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation [etc.]

And the Bigelow & Holmes fonts (Lucida Sans/Bright/Typewriter) say


Of course there are other conditions to fulfill about not modifying the fonts and providing the same copyright notices to the user.

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