fayad/roboto

The Roboto family of fonts

This is the source repository for Roboto: Google’s signature family of fonts, the default font on Android and ChromeOS, and the recommended font for Google’s visual language, Material Design.

It also contains the toolchain used in creating Roboto.

The font family supports all Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek characters in Unicode 7.0, as well as the currency symbol for the Georgian lari, to be published in Unicode 8.0.

The fonts are currently available in eighteen different styles.

A subset of an earlier version of Roboto is available from Google Fonts, and can be used as a web font.

Setup

Create a clean directory for roboto:

mkdir -p $HOME/roboto-src
cd $HOME/roboto-src

Download the code and dependencies:

git clone https://github.com/google/roboto.git
git clone https://github.com/behdad/fonttools.git
git clone https://github.com/robofab-developers/robofab.git
git clone https://github.com/typesupply/feaTools.git
git clone https://github.com/typemytype/booleanOperations.git

download Cython and extract it into the current directory. On Ubuntu, Cython can also be downloaded and installed via:

sudo apt-get install cython

For OTF generation:

git clone https://github.com/typesupply/ufo2fdk.git

To build the FDK yourself:

git clone https://github.com/adobe-type-tools/afdko.git

download the latest version of Python 2.7 here and extract it into the current directory.

If you're not building the FDK yourself, download the pre-built version here and unzip it into the current directory.

For TTF generation, on Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install fontforge python-fontforge

For post-production:

git clone https://github.com/googlei18n/nototools
git clone https://github.com/rougier/freetype-py.git

download the latest tarball release of HarfBuzz here and extract it into the home directory as $HOME/harfbuzz (alternatively, you can download the latest source from GitHub via git clone https://github.com/behdad/harfbuzz.git).

Install dependencies:

You can install the necessary modules at the sytem level:

cd fonttools
sudo python setup.py install
cd ../robofab
sudo python setup.py install
cd ../feaTools
sudo python setup.py install
cd ../Cython-0.22
sudo python setup.py install
cd ../booleanOperations
sudo python setup.py install
cd ..

Or set $PYTHONPATH locally before running make:

PYTHONPATH="$PYTHONPATH:$HOME/roboto-src/fonttools/Lib"
PYTHONPATH="$PYTHONPATH:$HOME/roboto-src/robofab/Lib"
PYTHONPATH="$PYTHONPATH:$HOME/roboto-src/feaTools/Lib"
PYTHONPATH="$PYTHONPATH:$HOME/roboto-src/booleanOperations/Lib"

For OTF generation:

cd ufo2fdk
sudo python setup.py install
cd ..

Or:

PYTHONPATH="$PYTHONPATH:$HOME/roboto-src/ufo2fdk/Lib"

If building the FDK yourself, follow the instructions in afdko/FDK/FDK Build Notes.txt:

cd Python-2.7
./configure --prefix=AFDKOPythonBuild
make install
mv AFDKOPythonBuild ../afdko/FDK/Tools/osx/Python
cd ../fonttools
sudo ../afdko/FDK/Tools/osx/Python/bin/python setup.py install
cd ../afdko/FDK/Tools/Programs
./BuildAll.sh
cd ../..
./FinishInstallOSX
cd ../..

Otherwise:

cd FDK
./FinishInstallOSX
cd ..

In either case, use whatever install scripts and directory (FinishInstall[OSX|Linux|Windows.cmd], BuildAll[.sh|Linux.sh|.cmd], FDK/Tools/[osx|linux|win]) are appropriate for your platform (more detailed information can be found in FDK/Read_Me_First.html).

For post-production:

cd $HOME/harfbuzz
./configure
make
sudo make install
cd $HOME/roboto-src/

Install python modules to system:

cd noto
sudo python setup.py install
cd ../freetype-py
sudo python setup.py install
cd ..

Or:

PYTHONPATH="$PYTHONPATH:$HOME/roboto-src/noto"
PYTHONPATH="$PYTHONPATH:$HOME/roboto-src/freetype-py"

On Ubuntu (or other distributions of GNU/Linux, using the appropriate package manager), make sure eog is installed:

sudo apt-get install eog

Running the toolchain:

cd roboto
make

Dependencies

The Roboto build toolchain depends on:

• FontTools (https://github.com/behdad/fonttools)
• RoboFab (https://github.com/robofab-developers/robofab)
• NumPy and SciPy (http://www.numpy.org/)
• feaTools (https://github.com/typesupply/feaTools.git), for feature handling.
• BooleanOperations (https://github.com/typemytype/booleanOperations), for glyph overlap removal.
  • (requires Cython to install: http://cython.org/)

OTF Generation

OTF generation depends on:

• ufo2fdk (https://github.com/typesupply/ufo2fdk)
• Open-source portions of the AFDKO (https://github.com/adobe-type-tools/afdko/releases)

The AFDKO from GitHub can be time consuming to setup. It is easier to just use the variety which includes closed-source tools (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/opentype/afdko.html), though these closed-source portions are not used to build Roboto.

TTF Generation

TTF generation depends on:

• FontForge (https://github.com/fontforge/fontforge)

Whose Python interface should be available on Ubuntu by default via apt-get install fontforge python-fontforge.

Post-Production

Post-production scripts (most of the code outside of the fontbuild directory, e.g. for testing output) depend on:

• The nototools module, installed as part of Noto (https://github.com/googlei18n/nototools)
  • (Noto subsequently depends on HarfBuzz: https://github.com/behdad/harfbuzz)
• freetype-py (https://github.com/rougier/freetype-py)
• eog (https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/EyeOfGnome)