This package is a convenient way to install the PCF bitmap version, PSF bitmap version, and the scalable TrueType outline version of "Unifont" (intended for general-purpose use) and "Unifont Sample" (which contains combining circles to use for illustration purposes). It also installs a copy of unifont.hex and related files in /usr/share/unifont.

GNU Unifont was designed to render something besides an empty box for each visible Unicode character in the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP, or Plane 0). The BMP contains most of the world's modern writing scripts. This font looks best at 12pt.

Complex fonts (such as Indic or Semitic scripts, where letters change shape depending on their position in a word, or such as Mongolian, which can be written vertically) will not render perfectly. The philosophy behind this font, though, is that anything meaningful is better than an empty box for an unknown glyph.