FreeMonoTengwar is another experimental Unicode font with support for the Tengwar script invented by J. R. R. Tolkien. It is based on the FreeMono font from the 2009-01-04 GNU FreeFont. Being a monowidth font, its aims are not aesthetic. It rather aims at providing a Unicode tengwar font that will hopefully work on major OS. In addition to the tengwar, this font has a wide coverage of all kinds of Latin letters, including for instance the IPA, and some other signs, including for instance the runes. That should allow this font to be used as a standard font in a text editor.
There is no standardized character mapping of the tengwar. However, a Unicode standardization has been proposed. This font’s mapping follows Michael Everson’s 2001-03-07 tengwar discussion paper for that proposal. That mapping is assigned to the Unicode Private Use Area characters U+e000 – U+e07d according to the Conscript Unicode Registry.
Note that the 2001-03-07 discussion paper introduces a number of changes from the earlier proposal. Therefore, this font’s mapping is not compatible with James Kass’s Code2000 font. However, it is compatible with Johan Winge’s Tengwar Telcontar font. This font adopts Johan Winge’s additions to Michael Eversons 2001-03-07 mapping, see tengtelc-discussion-007.pdf. Furthermore, this font adds one more tengwa at U+E03E, the vilya variant extensively used in the recently published DTS 71 text.
For browser testing and in order to allow copy-pasting, here is the same table again in HTML. Note that it won’t show properly unless you have the FreeMonoTengwar font installed. Since some browser don’t display properly the tehtar, they are placed on a dotted circle ◌. The tengwar names and the characters’ Unicode numbers will show up when you keep the mouse pointer over a table cell.
| xxx0 | xxx1 | xxx2 | xxx3 | xxx4 | xxx5 | xxx6 | xxx7 | xxx8 | xxx9 | xxxa | xxxb | xxxc | xxxd | xxxe | xxxf | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| e00x | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| e01x | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| e02x | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| e03x | | | | | | | | | | | ||||||
| e04x | ◌ | ◌ | ◌ | ◌ | ◌ | ◌ | ◌ | ◌ | ◌ | ◌ | ◌ | ◌ | ◌ | ◌ | ◌ | ◌ |
| e05x | ◌ | ◌ | ◌ | ◌ | ◌ | ◌ | ◌ | ◌ | | ◌ | ||||||
| e06x | | | | | | | | | | | ||||||
| e07x | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ◌ |
A tengwar font requires a complex rendering mostly due to many possible tehtar combinations. In a Dan Smith’s mapping tengwar fonts, this requirement is met by conveying up to four different versions of most tehtar and of some other signs. Michael Everson’s mapping proposal, however, provides only one character for each tengwar sign.
There are smart font technologies such as OpenType and Apple Advanced Typography that are able to meet the rendering requirements of a tengwar script. However, they are difficult. This tengwar font is only a beginner’s work. One of the reason for making it a monowidth font was precisely that this turns the rendering a lot easier. The only more or less smart technology this font makes use of is ligatures. A complete list of its ligatures is provided in the FreeMonoTengwar ligatures table.
This font has been created by editing the GNU FreeFont’s FreeMono.sfd file with FontForge. Most tengwar glyphs are just copy-edit modifications of existing FreeFont glyphs. The other FreeFont glyphs have not been altered. Many non-Latin FreeFont glyphs have been removed in order to reduce the file size.
For using the font on your computer, download FreeMonoTengwar.ttf (you may have to rightclick it and choose Save link as... or something alike) and install it. It should be suitable as a general purpose monowidth font, for instance as a standard font on a text editor or a terminal (that’s how I’m using it).
To use this font’s tengwar, you need a way of accessing the Personal Use Area characters where they are located. This can be achieved either by simple copy-pasting (for instance from the above table or from FileFormat.info’s Unicode Font Character Support site), by some sort of Unicode input or by the installation of a specialized keyboard layout (I am using the Unicode Tengwar Keyboard Layout for Mac OS X, Dan Smith style).
To edit the font, get FontForge, download FreeMonoTengwar.sfd (you may have to rightclick it and choose Save link as... or something alike) and feel free to edit under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
The FreeMonoTengwar font is free software: You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This FreeMonoTengwar font is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with the FreeMonoTengwar font. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
As a special exception, if you create a document which uses this font, and embed this font or unaltered portions of this font into the document, this font does not by itself cause the resulting document to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the document might be covered by the GNU General Public License. If you modify this font, you may extend this exception to your version of the font, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version.
Please note that for you to use J. R. R. Tolkien's tengwar script in a commercial production you may have to have permission from the Tolkien Estate.