Roboto: Google’s signature font is now open source

Also worth take a look at the Roboto specimen booklet which presents the font in a better light than the Google Fonts website (PDF): <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;material-design.storage.googleapis.com&#x2F;publish&#x2F;material_v_3&#x2F;material_ext_publish&#x2F;0B0J8hsRkk91LNGdYTEF0VnVPT0k&#x2F;RobotoSpecimenBooklet.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;material-design.storage.googleapis.com&#x2F;publish&#x2F;materi...</a>

Not that many people respect font licensing, but the Roboto font has been Apache licensed since it was released (like the rest of AOSP and fonts previous to Roboto in Android). Moving to a full open production and tool chain is interesting though.

Screenshot:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;fonts&#x2F;specimen&#x2F;Roboto" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;fonts&#x2F;specimen&#x2F;Roboto</a>

Roboto is very nice and I use it a lot. Roboto Slab [0] is also good if you want a serif font instead.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;fonts&#x2F;specimen&#x2F;Roboto+Slab" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;fonts&#x2F;specimen&#x2F;Roboto+Slab</a>

I hope this is not a dumb question, but as I have no experience&#x2F;knowledge in creating fonts, I will ask nevertheless.<p>I quickly scanned through the repo and assumed that the font is created programmatically through a Python script. Is that correct and a common way to build a new font?

there&#x27;s a LaTeX package (last version dating 2015-04-16) available [0] (with samples [1]):<p><i>This package provides LaTeX, pdfLaTeX, XeLaTeX and LuaLaTeX support for the Roboto, RobotoCondensed and RobotoSlab families of fonts, designed by Christian Robertson for Google</i><p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ctan.org&#x2F;tex-archive&#x2F;fonts&#x2F;roboto" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ctan.org&#x2F;tex-archive&#x2F;fonts&#x2F;roboto</a><p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ctan.uib.no&#x2F;fonts&#x2F;roboto&#x2F;doc&#x2F;samples.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ctan.uib.no&#x2F;fonts&#x2F;roboto&#x2F;doc&#x2F;samples.pdf</a>

I may be reading this wrong, but the only annoyance I would find with their toolchain is that it seems like their true source is the FontLab files which is not open source. The readme says that you should be able to edit the UFO files and generate the FontLab files from that, but it doesn&#x27;t seem to be the process they are using. It would be nice for the UFO files to be the true source rather than a derived one.

Is there a font nerd here who can describe what makes Roboto unique?

Looks like the quick fox is no longer.<p>&quot;Grumpy wizards make toxic brew for the evil Queen and Jack.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;fonts&#x2F;specimen&#x2F;Roboto" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;fonts&#x2F;specimen&#x2F;Roboto</a>

Great, now we can have a monospace version for the terminal&#x2F;editor.

Wish the Literata font from Play books would become available.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fastcodesign.com&#x2F;3046511&#x2F;how-google-made-an-e-book-font-designed-for-any-screen" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fastcodesign.com&#x2F;3046511&#x2F;how-google-made-an-e-boo...</a>

Has anyone tried to release an app into the iOS Appstore which uses this font? It looks great in my app and I&#x27;d like to know if there are going to be problems with Apple if I use this for an iOS&#x2F;Android multi-platform app .. anyone know?

Unfortunately, since a week or so it&#x27;s all over YouTube. Arial was much easier to read.

The thing most enjoyable about Roboto is how it&#x27;s changes are a near perfect reflection of Google&#x27;s design capability.

If it’s a “signature” font, isn’t it covered by trademark, and would this not make any copyright licence irrelevant?

Hmm... What&#x27;s up with this page?<p>&quot;Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition has blocked a page! Malware detected! Access to this page has been blocked.&quot;<p>Any idea what&#x27;s in there tripping out Bitdefender?

The term &quot;open source&quot; only means that the source code is published; it says nothing about the license. Perhaps I&#x27;m nitpicking but the title of this post isn&#x27;t very clear in my opinion.

The font is still very ugly though.

Shameless plug: Here&#x27;s a poster I made recently using Roboto Slab:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hypertexthero.com&#x2F;logbook&#x2F;2015&#x2F;05&#x2F;when-doubt-move&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hypertexthero.com&#x2F;logbook&#x2F;2015&#x2F;05&#x2F;when-doubt-move&#x2F;</a><p>Edit: Is it bad etiquette here at HN to do shameless plugs for the purpose of finding work?