Fonts

From sona pona, the Toki Pona wiki
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VERY preliminary, and so many fonts need to get their information filled out and get at least a little description, if possible check what history there is to the font etc.

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Many fonts have been created for Toki Pona and its original writing systems, with varying feature sets. For the purpose of this article, only SFNT fonts are considered (fonts that have a file that is installable on modern computers - like TTF, OTF - or a file that can be embedded on a website - including WOFF, WOFF2).

Key

Infoboxes on this page include images to showcase features of interest.

sitelen pona fonts

5x5 sitelen pona

5x5 sitelen pona
Supported characters All pu glyphs, several ku glyphs
Style Pixelated
Writing system sitelen pona
Author jan Sewaka, jan Weko
License CC BY-SA 3.0
Features
Codepoints only

5x5 sitelen pona is a minimalist pixelated font. Due to the limitations of the font-making program Fontstruct, the sitelen pona glyphs take on space in the Unicode blocks designated Latin characters, sharing codepoints with some other Fontstruct fonts.[a]

As the name suggests, any sitelen pona character is made out of blocks that fit into a box of 5 times 5 blocks. To do so, it sometimes relies on alternate versions of the glyphs. Of all computer-installable pixel fonts, it achieves the lowest amount of blocks

CraftyPE

CraftyPE
Supported characters All of UCSUR
Style Uniform line weight
Writing system sitelen pona
Author ParanormalChicken, Erek Butcher
License OFL
Features

CraftyPE is an un-pixelated adaptation of Mojangles, the pixel default font in videogaem Minecraft, and is inspired by ArtsyOmni / Omni Jacala of Curiomatic & Curioglyphic. It is intended for a resource pack to modify Minecraft with Caxton.

Fairfax fonts

Fairfax
Supported characters All of UCSUR (completionist)
Style Pixelated
Writing system sitelen pona
Author Rebecca Bettencourt
License OFL
Features
Fairfax Pona
Supported characters All of UCSUR (completionist)
Style Pixelated
Writing system sitelen pona
Author Rebecca Bettencourt
License OFL
Features
Fairfax HD
Supported characters All of UCSUR (completionist)
Style Uniform line weight
Writing system sitelen pona
Author Rebecca Bettencourt
License OFL
Features
Fairfax Pona HD
Supported characters All of UCSUR (completionist)
Style Uniform line weight
Writing system sitelen pona
Author Rebecca Bettencourt
License OFL
Features

Fairfax is a font family comprising 11 individual fonts, which are designed to cover all the script in the UCSUR.[1] It was created and maintained by Rebecca Bettencourt (jan Lepeka), who is also in charge of UCSUR. sitelen pona was added to UCSUR in 26 August 2021.

The main series (without an ending) consits of 6x12 pixelated fonts. The "HD" series refers to a vector font. HD supercedes the "SD" series of pixel fonts, however, those are still maintained. Finally, the "Pona" series refers to those fonts that allow Toki Pona words to be converted from ASCII to sitelen pona through OpenType ligatures.

As of November 2023, the following fonts have support for sitelen pona:

  • Fairfax
  • Fairfax Serif
  • Fairfax Pona
  • Fairfax Hax
  • Fairfax Serif Hax
  • Fairfax HD
  • Fairfax Pona HD
  • Fairfax Hax HD

insa pi supa lape

insa pi supa lape basic
Supported characters All UCSUR characters
Style pixel-based, uniform line weight
Writing system sitelen pona
Author devurandom / jan Lentan
License CC0
Features
First publication 2022-02-16
insa pi supa lape
Supported characters All UCSUR characters
Style pixel-based, uniform line weight
Writing system sitelen pona
Author devurandom / jan Lentan
License CC0
Features
First publication 2020-05-28

insa pi supa lape is a pixel based font in which the blocks got smoothed out, just like the font "Bedstead" by ~bjh21, which the insa pi supa lape is based on. It uses 5x9 pixel blocks as a basis for the characters. Like many other pixel based fonts, it uses some alternate drawings for some of the words. Alongside light and bold versions, the font is available as a standard version with ligatures and a "basic" version without ligatures.

leko lili 15x15

leko majuna

linja Sipiki

linja ante

linja leko

linja leko pi luka tu

linja lipamanka

linja lipamanka
Supported characters All UCSUR glyphs, adopts an increasing amount of extra glyphs and personal name glyphs
Style Uniform line weight
Writing system sitelen pona
Author lipamanka
License OFL
Features
First publication 19 January 2023[2]

linja lipamanka is a sucessor font to linja sike by lipamanka, meant to add and improve on it. As its development progresses, community-suggested words, popular features and custom name glyphs get integrated into the font.[3]

linja luka

linja namako

linja pi pu lukin

linja pi tomo lipu

linja pimeja fonts

linja pimeja
Supported characters All pu glyphs
Style Handwritten
Writing system sitelen pona
Author increpare (jan Inkepa)
License CC0
Features
First publication 12 December 2019[4]
linja pimeja pona
Supported characters All pu glyphs, plus kijetesantakalu, kin, namako, oko, and tonsi.
Style Handwritten
Writing system sitelen pona
Author jan Ke Tami, increpare (jan Inkepa)
License OFL
Features
Any unrecognised word will automatically be turned into a cartouche with Latin characters
First publication 5 November 2021[5]

linja pimeja is a font in handwritten style using a thick marker pen. It was created by increpare (jan Inkepa) in 2019. In 2021, jan Ke Tami created an expansion on it, while also merging features with sitelen pona pona, resulting in unrecognised characters to be automatically converted into a cartouche with Latin characters. Five nimi ku suli glyphs were also added:

  • The glyph for kijetesantakalu is taken from one of the kijetesantakalu o! comics.
  • The glyph for oko is an edit of suli, lukin and ijo
  • The glyph for kin is an edit of a and lete
  • The glyph for namako is an edit of sin
  • The glyph for tonsi is an edit of jan and sin

linja pona

linja pona
"linja pona" written in the linja pona font
Supported characters ku suli, plus 3 ku lili
Style Uniform line weight
Writing system sitelen pona
Author David A. Roberts, jan Same
License OFL
Features

linja pona is a relatively early and influential font, created by David A. Roberts and expanded on by jan Same. The pi extension can go up to three characters wide.

linja sike

linja suwi

linja waso

linja wawa

nasin leko suwi

nasin leko suwi lili

nasin luka

nasin nanpa

nasin sitelen pu mono

nasin sitelen pu mono
Supported characters ku suli
Style Handwritten
Writing system sitelen pona
Author jan Ke Tami, kili pan Juli
License CC0
Features
First publication 6 April 2022[6]

nasin sitelen pu mono is a handwritten font, created by jan Ke Tami and kili pan Juli. It features all pu glyphs, derived from the the vectorized drawings from Toki Pona: The Language of Good and traced drawings from the Esperanto edition of the same book (thinned to make them more consistent with the preceding drawings).

Neoletters

Neoletters
Supported characters incomplete: all pu words minus walo
Style pixelated
Writing system sitelen pona
Author Oren Watson
License CC BY NC SA 4.0
Features

Neoletters is a font with origins in the early 2000's for video games. All characters are monospaced. Sometime between 2019 and 2020, it added sitelen pona, adding all pu glyphs and cartouche brackets, but notably missing walo.

Nishiki-teki

Nishiki-teki
Supported characters All UCSUR characters
Style Uniform line weight
Writing system sitelen pona
Author jan Umi
License OFL
Features
Provides clean combinations for all character permutations.

Nishiki-teki (Japanese: にしき的フォント; Hepburn: Nishiki teki fonto) is a massive Unicode-compliant font with additional glyphs for a very wide range of purposes, created by jan Umi (Japanese: うみほたる; Hepburn: Umihotaru). It was inspired by the Ukaga shell "Nishiki", with the shell appearing many times as glyphs in the font.

On 1 November 2022, sitelen pona glyphs were added, according to UCSUR, allowing for over 31 thousand possible character combinations.[7]

Nishiki-teki lili

Nishiki-teki lili
Supported characters All UCSUR characters
Style Uniform line weight
Writing system sitelen pona
Author jan Umi, jan Ke Tami
License OFL
Features
Provides clean combinations for all character permutations.

Nishiki-teki lili is a derivation of Nishiki-teki created by jan Ke Tami to reduce file size, only including the sitelen pona glyphs. On April 2023, ligatures were added to the font.

Sevenish

sike en linja

sitelen

sitelen Kotopon

sitelen Sans

sitelen luka tu tu

sitelen pi jan Soja

sitelen pi linja ko

sitelen pona 7x7

sitelen pona PMD sky font

sitelen pona kiwen

sitelen pona kiwen nanpa tu

sitelen pona pi palisa mute

sitelen pona pi palisa mute
Supported characters All pu glyphs
Style Segment display
Writing system sitelen pona
Author WMCook
License Fontstruct ND NC[8]
Features
First publication 9 March 2021

sitelen pona pi palisa mute is a font adaption of sitelen pona into a 16-segment display, created by WMCook.[9] Due to the technical limitations of the font-making program Fontstruct, the sitelen pona glyphs take on space in the Unicode blocks designated for Latin characters, sharing codepoints with some other Fontstruct fonts.[a]

sitelen seli kiwen fonts

Toki Pona Bubble fonts

Toki Pona Bubble
Supported characters All of ku suli
Style Outlines
Writing system sitelen pona
Author Jordan W. Martin
License Personal use only
Features
First publication 3 February 2022[10]
Toki Pona Bubble (color)
Supported characters All of ku suli
Style Outlines
Writing system sitelen pona
Author Jordan W. Martin
License Personal use only
Features
First publication 3 February 2022[10]

Toki Pona Bubble is a pair of fonts created by Jordan W. Martin in 2022.[10] They feature characters outlines with patterns inside as a lineart version and the the color font has all the characters colored in red, blue, green, or yellow, with the outline and the pattern in a darker shade.

The colored version serves as a basis for a downloadable poster which shows all supported sitelen pona characters on one sheet. Colored fonts are not supported everywhere. If the color feature is not supported, the font tends to get displayed as black (or whatever the default color is set to) anywhere there is color. As a result, they may look like bold black characters, which should not hinder legibility.

toki pona OTF

toki pona OTF


Style Uniform line weight
Writing system sitelen pona
Author jan Wesi
License All rights reserved
Features

toki pona OTF is a uniform line weight font and the first sitelen pona font ever made, first published only 2 months after the publication of Toki Pona: The Language of Good. Its ASCII transcription has some oddities that users might want to be aware of:

  • ken and kepeken only exist as codepoints and are not accessible by typing them out in the Latin alphabet.
  • a, e and o only get converted into sitelen pona if an x is added after, to distinguish them from their Latin counterparts.
  • Any word also gets converted into sitelen pona if the first letter is capitalized
  • The string zz serves as a separator between glyphs – but unlike modern fonts, it is only a zero-width space instead of an ideographic space.
  • The string tokipona gets converted into the Toki Pona symbol.

toki pona PixelFonts

Unifont CSUR

Unifont CSUR
Supported characters All UCSUR characters
Style Pixelated
Writing system sitelen pona
Author Roman Czyborra, Paul Hardy
License OFL/GPL
Features
codepoints only

Unifont CSUR is a companion font to GNU Unifont and is part of the GNU Project. GNU Unifont got started in 1998 and today the project covers over 2 million codepoints. It can be found in most free operating systems. The base font has glyphs in Unicode Plane 0, Plane 2 and Plane 3. Unifont CSUR has glyphs in Plane 0 and Plane 15.

In the 17 April 2022 release (Unifont 14.0.03), Paul Hardy added sitelen pona, along side some other UCSUR scripts (Xaîni, Ophidian, Niji, Shidinn). As of 4 November 2023, all UCSUR characters have been encoded, but the format codepoints exist as solid characters instead of serving their formatting functions, leading character combinations, character extensions and cartouches to be broken. This kind of limitation is generally the case wth GNU Unifont and companion fonts, and it is meant as a font of "last resort".[11]

sitelen pona inspired ideograph fonts

sitelen Antowi

sitelen Antowi (Android)
Supported characters ku suli
Style Material design
Writing system sitelenponido
Author jan Jeli / UkiyoMoji Fonts
License Custom license
Features
Any capitalised word will automatically be turned into a cartouche with Latin characters
First publication 19 May 2022[12]

sitelen Antowi (Android) is a reimagining of sitelen pona characters as if they were material design UI icons (as used, for example, for apps or setting pictograms on mobile operating systems). As a result, most glyphs are altered in some shape or form, and even taking inspiration from alternate forms of a glyph instead of the standard glyph. Below are some useful tips for typing:

  • Capitalized words will get autocartouched
  • Non-latin cartouches need an underscore as a separator after each word
  • Extended pi requires a + after pi and +pi as a new word after each word underlined by the pi extension line
  • Alternate forms of glyphs can be reached by adding - after the word

sitelen lili

sitelen pona pi lasin lukin

sitelen pona pona

sitelen pona pona
"jan li pana e moku tawa sina" written in sitelen pona pona
Supported characters pu glyphs, plus the initial set of extended linja pona characters
Style uniform line weight
Writing system sitelenponido
Author Jack Humbert
License OFL
Features
Any unrecognised word will automatically be turned into a cartouche with Latin characters
First publication 9 March 2020

sitelen pona pona is a writing system and font, designed to be a simplified version of sitelen pona. While the font uses UCSUR codepoints, the ones it uses are incompatible with the assigned range for sitelen pona, as it was made far before sitelen pona got added to the standard.

sitelen telo Momo

sitelen sitelen fonts

Other writing systems

Alphabets

linja lape suwi

linja pi kama wan

linja pi kute mute

linja pi kute mute tu

linja sike pi kute mute

sitelen Komalin

sitelen leko kiki

sitelen leko ko

sitelenlili

sitelen palisa sewi

sitelen suwi ko

sitelen uta

seta sans

TokiTengwar

TokiTengwar
Supported characters Toki Pona alphabet, plus punctuation


Writing system Tengwar
Author Bryant J. Knight (jan Pije)
License All rights reserved


TokiTengwar is an adaptation of the Tengwar alphabet from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings universe, to allow typing toki pona words. Below are some useful tips for typing:

  • A puts the vowel marker "a" further to the left, which is useful to put it over consonant glyphs
  • q serves as a stem for vowels without a preceding consonant
  • syllable-final "-n" can be typed with either N or M
  • ` adds a paragraph marker
  • , adds an interpunct

sitelen nasin luka

sitelen telo

Sitelen Ko

tuki tiki fonts

tuki tiki is a tokiponido that has a writing system very similar to toki pona. In addition to this list of fonts, nasin luka also supports the tuki tiki glyphs, however they only exist as codepoints.

kiku upi ala

tama ka Tumu

tama ka Tumu
Supported characters All tuki tiki words, except lapi, plus liti
Style Handwritten
Writing system titi pula
Author ka Tumu, jan Ke Tami, and Kelsey Higham (waso Keli)
License OFL
Features
First publication 13 January 2023

tama ka Tumu (meaning "the likeness of ka Tumu") is a titi pula font, with characters written by ka Tumu and vectorized by jan Ke Tami. When it was made, the word liti had been made, which was later replaced by lapi. This replacement is yet to be reflected in the font.

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 5x5 sitelen pona, sitelen pona kiwen nanpa tu, sitelen pona pi palisa mute, and sitelen pona 7x7 share codepoints with jan Weko's sitelen pona kiwen. Google spreadsheet of codepoints - for some of the fonts, it might be necessary to offset codepoints by 100(hex)

References

  1. Rebecca Bettencourt. "Fairfax". KreativeKorp. Retrieved 10 November 2023.
  2. lipamanka [@lipamanka]. (19 January 2023). [Message posted in the #linja lipamanka thread in the #toki-suli channel in the ma pona pi toki pona Discord server]. Discord. Retrieved 4 November 2023.
  3. lipamanka. linja lipamanka. lipamanka's website. Retrieved 5 November 2023.
  4. increpare [u/sitelen_ike]. (21 December 2023). "linja pimeja li nasin sitelen sin pi sitelen pona (new font for sitelen pona called linja pimeja)". Reddit. Retrieved 10 November 2023.
  5. jan Ke Tami [u/janKeTami]. (5 November 2021). "linja pimeja pona". Reddit. Retrieved 10 November 2023.
  6. kili pan Juli. (6 April 2022). [Message posted in the #font-help channel in the ma pi nasin sitelen Discord server]. Discord. Retrieved 4 November 2023.
  7. Umihotaru [@Umihotarus] (1 November 2022). "にしき的フォントをトキポナの表語文字 sitelen pona に対応させました。#tokipona #sitelenpona […]". Twitter. Retrieved 5 November 2023.
  8. "End User License Agreement for “sitelen pona pi palisa mute”". Fontstruct. Retrieved 10 November 2023.
  9. WMCook. "sitelen pona pi palisa mute". Fontstruct. Retrieved 10 November 2023.
  10. 10.0 10.1 10.2 Jordan W. Martin [u/Jordanwmartinart]. (3 February 2022). "toki pona poster and font available!". Reddit. Retrieved 10 February 2023.
  11. "Unifont Limitations". GNU Unifont Glyphs. Unifoundry.com.
  12. u/salsarosada (19 May 2022). "sitelen Antowi (Material Design style Sitelen Pona font)". Reddit. Retrieved 5 November 2023.

External links