 | |
| Category | Sans-serif |
|---|---|
| Classification | Humanist |
| Designer(s) | Dave Crossland |
| Foundry | Abattis |
| Date created | 2009 |
| License | SIL Open Font License |
| Website | cantarell |
| Latest release version | 0.303[1] |
| Latest release date | 13 September 2021 |
Cantarell was the defaulttypeface supplied with theuser interface ofGNOME from version 3.0 until version 48, replacingBitstream Vera andDejaVu. The font was originated by Dave Crossland in 2009.
Operating systems that shipped GNOME (version 3 to version 48) included this typeface family by default, such asFedora Linux, andRed Hat Enterprise Linux includes the font family in itsGoogle Fonts directory, making the typeface available for use in Web sites. It is notably absent inUbuntu which includes theUbuntu typeface instead.
Starting from GNOME 48, Cantarell was replaced by Adwaita Sans as the default typeface for the user interface.[2]
In 2009 the Cantarell fonts were initially designed by Dave Crossland during his studies of typeface design at theUniversity of Reading.[3] In 2010, the fonts were chosen by GNOME for use in its 3.0 release, and the font sources were moved to GNOME's Git repository.[4] The fonts are maintained there, allowing contributions from a variety of designers including Jakub Steiner and Pooja Saxena. In 2013 Pooja Saxena joined the GNOME foundation's “Outreach Programme for Women” internship,[5] and was tasked with improving the design and language support.[6] In 2014 Pooja was given financial support by Google Fonts to extend the design toDevanagari, but due to unavoidable vertical metrics adjustments the family was published with a new name,Cambay.[7] Another Cantarell-derived font is Petra Sans.[citation needed]
In GNOME 3.28 (March 2018), the font was re-designed with two additional weights, light and extra bold.[8]
Cantarell initially received both criticism and support from thefree software community. It was argued that GNOME's use of Cantarell reducedlegibility in desktop applications, it was notkerned and has deformedglyphs.[9] Other users enjoyed the design, calling it “stylish and beautiful, but most importantly, crisp and easy to read.”[10] The initial release notes stated that it was designed for legibility on screens.[11]
GNOME's choice was also criticized since Cantarell only supports some Latin languages, far fewer than the previously usedDejaVu fonts.[12] When the fonts were first published, Crossland invited others to extend the language support[11] and this finally began in 2013 when Saxena began applying the design to the Cyrillic script.[6]
Cantarell does not include nativeitalics oroblique glyphs.[13]
| Software and libraries | |
|---|---|
| Licenses | |
| Operating system, corporate and professional |
|
| Government typefaces | |
| Other typefaces | |
| Groups and people | |
| Core Applications | |||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Extras |
| ||||||||||||||||
| Components |
| ||||||||||||||||
| Community | |||||||||||||||||
| People | |||||||||||||||||
