Fixedsys Excelsior
Encyclopedia
Fixedsys Excelsior is an unofficial pan-Unicode
extension of the popular Microsoft font Fixedsys
. The current version, last updated in 2007, is 3.01.
In addition to the basic Latin alphabet supported by the original Fixedsys, this font supports Arabic alphabet
, Cyrillic alphabet
, Runic alphabet
, IPA, etc., but not CJK
(a complete listing of coverage can be seen below). It also contains narrow, serif, reverse, italic, cursive, and reversed (mirror image) forms of Fixedsys stored in its Private Use Area. The font is fitted entirely into the Basic Multilingual Plane, and as such, some characters with Unicode support in other planes (such as the Gothic alphabet
) are instead mapped into the PUA for greater accessibility. The fullwidth character section is instead filled by small capitals and text figure
forms of Fixedsys. Overall, 5,993 glyphs are covered in the typeface.
Fixedsys Excelsior is free software
and appears to have been released by its author into the public domain
. The font has no hinting
.
In the "private use" area of the widely distributed Fixedsys Excelsior 2.0 (last updated in 2004), the font contains characters contained in few other fonts, so it is likely to be selected by Windows for displaying those character codes. In Mozilla Firefox
and some other programs, this appears to be the default.
In that image range, there are images for genitalia; steaming excrement; and others. Because of this, some "child friendly" chat clients and Internet forums filter out these character codes, as well as the range EA00 to EAFF which allows bitmapped images to be created.
The genitalia were removed in Fixedsys Excelsior 3, though the steaming excrements remained and a "Now More Moist!" sign was added (to complement a dingbat of a logo for a tinned food product named "Catbeef").
s.
Codepoints 0x91 (private-use-1), and 0x92 (private-use-2) are glyphed as typographical single quotes—corresponding to Windows Codepage 1252.
Controls I (0x09, tab), J (0x10, line-feed), and M (0x0D, carriage-return) The rest of the C0 controls are glyphed as solid rectangles
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
extension of the popular Microsoft font Fixedsys
Fixedsys
Fixedsys is a family of raster monospaced fonts. The name means fixed system, although it is often pronounced "fixed size" because its glyphs are monospace or fixed-width...
. The current version, last updated in 2007, is 3.01.
In addition to the basic Latin alphabet supported by the original Fixedsys, this font supports Arabic alphabet
Arabic alphabet
The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...
, Cyrillic alphabet
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
, Runic alphabet
Runic alphabet
The runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes to write various Germanic languages before the adoption of the Latin alphabet and for specialized purposes thereafter...
, IPA, etc., but not CJK
CJK
CJK is a collective term for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, which is used in the field of software and communications internationalization.The term CJKV means CJK plus Vietnamese, which constitute the main East Asian languages.- Characteristics :...
(a complete listing of coverage can be seen below). It also contains narrow, serif, reverse, italic, cursive, and reversed (mirror image) forms of Fixedsys stored in its Private Use Area. The font is fitted entirely into the Basic Multilingual Plane, and as such, some characters with Unicode support in other planes (such as the Gothic alphabet
Gothic alphabet
The Gothic alphabet is an alphabet for writing the Gothic language, created in the 4th century by Ulfilas for the purpose of translating the Christian Bible....
) are instead mapped into the PUA for greater accessibility. The fullwidth character section is instead filled by small capitals and text figure
Text figures
Text figures are numerals typeset with varying heights in a fashion that resembles a typical line of running text, hence the name...
forms of Fixedsys. Overall, 5,993 glyphs are covered in the typeface.
Fixedsys Excelsior is free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
and appears to have been released by its author into the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
. The font has no hinting
Font hinting
Font hinting is the use of mathematical instructions to adjust the display of an outline font so that it lines up with a rasterized grid. At low screen resolutions, hinting is critical for producing a clear, legible text...
.
History - Version 3.00
- Arabic, Hebrew and Armenian is made from scratch.
- Font height is changed to 16 pixels.
- Improved Latin extensions and Cyrillic.
- Added several more double-width characters and removed Japanese Kana signs
- Underline error removed.
Adult content
In the "private use" area of the widely distributed Fixedsys Excelsior 2.0 (last updated in 2004), the font contains characters contained in few other fonts, so it is likely to be selected by Windows for displaying those character codes. In Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...
and some other programs, this appears to be the default.
In that image range, there are images for genitalia; steaming excrement; and others. Because of this, some "child friendly" chat clients and Internet forums filter out these character codes, as well as the range EA00 to EAFF which allows bitmapped images to be created.
The genitalia were removed in Fixedsys Excelsior 3, though the steaming excrements remained and a "Now More Moist!" sign was added (to complement a dingbat of a logo for a tinned food product named "Catbeef").
Sparse and peculiar control character glyphs
A handful of the C0 controls have glyphs consisting of a tiny "CC" over an inverse (swapped foreground and background) letter. Controls B (0x00, start-text), C (0x03, end-text), and O (0x0F, shift-out) have their correct letter; however controls V (0x16, sync), and _ (0x1F, unit-separator) are identified as R, and U—corresponding to their usage for "reverse" (inverse) and underlined text in many IRC clientClient (computing)
A client is an application or system that accesses a service made available by a server. The server is often on another computer system, in which case the client accesses the service by way of a network....
s.
Codepoints 0x91 (private-use-1), and 0x92 (private-use-2) are glyphed as typographical single quotes—corresponding to Windows Codepage 1252.
Controls I (0x09, tab), J (0x10, line-feed), and M (0x0D, carriage-return) The rest of the C0 controls are glyphed as solid rectangles
Supported Unicode ranges
| 00 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50 | 60 | 70 | 80 | 90 | A0 | B0 | C0 | D0 | E0 | F0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0000 | colspan=8 | colspan=8 | ||
| 0100 | colspan=8 | colspan=8 | ||
| 0200 | colspan=5 | colspan=6 | colspan=5 | |
| 0300 | colspan=7 | colspan=9 | ||
| 0400 | colspan=16 | |||
| 0500 | colspan=3 | colspan=6 | colspan=7 | |
| 0600 | colspan=16 | |||
| 0700 | colspan=5 | colspan=3 | colspan=4 | colspan=4 |
| 0800 | colspan=16 | |||
| 0900 | colspan=8 | colspan=8 | ||
| 0A00 | colspan=8 | colspan=8 | ||
| 0B00 | colspan=8 | colspan=8 | ||
| 0C00 | colspan=8 | colspan=8 | ||
| 0D00 | colspan=8 | colspan=8 | ||
| 0E00 | colspan=8 | colspan=8 | ||
| 0F00 | colspan=16 |
- Part of Myanmar (1000–109F): 1040–1049
- GeorgianGeorgian alphabetThe Georgian alphabet is the writing system used to write the Georgian language and other Kartvelian languages , and occasionally other languages of the Caucasus such as Ossetic and Abkhaz during the 1940s...
(10A0–10FF) - Ethiopic (1200–137F)
- OghamOghamOgham is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to write the Old Irish language, and occasionally the Brythonic language. Ogham is sometimes called the "Celtic Tree Alphabet", based on a High Medieval Bríatharogam tradition ascribing names of trees to the individual letters.There are roughly...
(1680–169F) - Runic (16A0–16FF)
- Tai LeTai Le scriptTai Le is the name of Tai Nüa script, the script used for the Tai Nüa language, given by Microsoft.-Unicode:Tai Le script was added to the Unicode Standard in April, 2003 with the release of version 4.0....
(1950–197F) - Part of Phonetic Extensions (1D00–1D7F): 1D00–1D2F, etc.
- Latin extended additional (1E00–1EFF)
- Greek Extended (1F00–1FFF)
- General Punctuation (2000–206F)
- Part of Superscripts and Subscripts (2070–209F): 2070–208F
- Part of Currency Symbols (20A0–20CF): 20A0–20B6—Warning: Through U+20B1 to U+20B6, the glyphs are shifted next code point of the correct code point.
- Part of Letterlike SymbolsLetterlike SymbolsLetterlike Symbols are graphemes which are constructed mainly from the glyphs of one or more letters.In Unicode, Letterlike Symbols are placed in the block U+2100–214F, as in the following table.-See also:*Mapping of Unicode characters...
(2100–214F) - Part of Number FormsNumber FormsNumber Forms are Unicode characters which have specific meaning as numbers, but are constructed from other characters. They consist primarily of vulgar fractions and roman numerals. They are placed in the Unicode codepoint range 0x2150 through 0x218F , except for three fractions in ISO-8859-1...
(2150–218F): Roman numeralsRoman numeralsThe numeral system of ancient Rome, or Roman numerals, uses combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet to signify values. The numbers 1 to 10 can be expressed in Roman numerals as:...
(2160–2183) - Part of ArrowsArrowsArrows Grand Prix International was a British Formula One team active from to . For a period of time, it was also known as Footwork.-Origins :...
(2190–21FF) - Part of Mathematical Operators (2200–22FF)
- Part of Miscellaneous Technical (2300–23FF)
- Part of Control Pictures (2400–243F)
- Part of Optical Character RecognitionOptical character recognitionOptical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used to convert books and documents into electronic files, to computerize a record-keeping...
(2440–245F): 2440–244A - Part of Enclosed Alphanumerics (2460–24FF)
- Box DrawingBox drawing charactersBox drawing characters, also known as line drawing characters, or pseudographics, are widely used in text user interfaces to draw various frames and boxes...
(2500–257F) - Part of Block Elements (2580–259F)
- Part of Geometric ShapesUnicode Geometric ShapesGeometric Shapes is a Unicode block of 96 symbols at codepoint range U+25A0-25FF.-U+25A0-U+25CF:-U+25D0-U+25FF:-Font coverage:Only two font sets—Code2000 and the DejaVu family—include coverage for each of the glyphs in the Geometric Shapes range, Unifont also contains all the glyphs...
(25A0–25FF) - Part of Miscellaneous SymbolsMiscellaneous SymbolsThe Miscellaneous Symbols Unicode block contains various glyphs representing things from a variety of categories: Astrological, Astronomical, Chess, Dice, Ideological symbols, Musical notation, Political symbols, Recycling, Religious symbols, Trigrams, Warning signs and Weather.-Tables:Note: These...
(2600–26FF) - Part of DingbatDingbatA dingbat is an ornament, character or spacer used in typesetting, sometimes more formally known as a "printer's ornament" or "printer's character"....
s (2700–27BF) - Supplemental Arrows-A (27F0–27FF)
- Part of Braille Patterns (2800–28FF): 2800–283F
- Latin Extended-C (2C60–2C7F)
- Georgian Supplement (2D00–2D2F)
- TifinaghTifinaghTifinagh is a series of abjad and alphabetic scripts used by some Berber peoples, notably the Tuareg, to write their language.A modern derivate of the traditional script, known as Neo-Tifinagh, was introduced in the 20th century...
(2D30–2D7F) - Part of CJK Symbols and Punctuation (3000-303F): 3002, 300C-300F, 3030
- Yijing Hexagram Symbols (4DC0–4DFF)
- Latin Extended-D (A720–A7FF)
- In Private Use Area (E000–F8FF), there is TengwarTengwarThe Tengwar are an artificial script created by J. R. R. Tolkien. In his fictional universe of Middle-earth, the tengwar were invented by the Elf Fëanor, and used first to write the Elven tongues: Quenya, Telerin, and also Valarin. Later a great number of languages of Middle-earth were written...
, GothicGothic alphabetThe Gothic alphabet is an alphabet for writing the Gothic language, created in the 4th century by Ulfilas for the purpose of translating the Christian Bible....
, Miscellaneous characters, narrow, serif, reverse, italic, cursive, and reversed form of Fixedsys. - Part of Alphabetic Presentation Forms (FB00–FB4F)
- Part of Arabic Presentation Forms-A (FB50–FDFF)
- Part of Small Form Variants (FE50–FE6F)
- Arabic Presentation Forms-B (FE70–FEFF)
- Part of Halfwidth and Fullwidth FormsHalfwidth and Fullwidth FormsIn CJK computing, graphic characters are traditionally classed into fullwidth and halfwidth characters...
(FF00–FFEF): Fullwidth numbers (FF10–FF19) and Fullwidth capitals (FF21–FF3A)—drawn as the small capitals and text figuresText figuresText figures are numerals typeset with varying heights in a fashion that resembles a typical line of running text, hence the name... - SpecialsUnicode SpecialsSpecials is the name of a short Unicode block allocated at the very end of the Basic Multilingual Plane, at U+FFF0–FFFF. Of these 16 codepoints, 5 are assigned as of Unicode 6.0:, marks start of annotated text, marks start of annotating text, marks end of annotating text, placeholder in the...
(FFF0–FFFF)