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Medieval Unicode Font Initiative |
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Disclaimer: This site is managed by scholars in Medieval studies with the aim of establishing a consensus on the use of Unicode among medievalists. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Unicode. |
BackgroundThe Medieval Unicode Font Initiative is a non-profit workgroup of scholars and font designers who would like to see a common solution to a problem felt by many medieval scholars: the encoding and display of special characters in Medieval texts written in the Latin alphabet. MUFI was founded in July 2001 by a workgroup consisting of Odd Einar Haugen (Bergen), Alec McAllister (Leeds) and Tarrin Wills (Sydney, now Copenhagen). The members of the workgroup communicates primarily by e-mail, but have occasionally met in Leeds (July 2002 and 2003). The first MUFI group meeting was held in Bergen (30-31 August 2003), the second in Lisboa, (10-12 March 2005), the third in Bonn (12-13 June 2006), the fourth in Mainz (23 June 2008), the fifth in Bergen (7-8 April 2011), and the sixth, also in Bergen (8-9 September 2015). As of August 2006, MUFI has a board of four members (listed in the right column of this page).
Why Unicode?Unicode is the new international font standard. In version 11.0 (published 5 June 2018), it covers more than 137,000 characters in living as well as historical scripts. It is fully supported by computer platforms like Linux, Mac and Windows. There is simply no alternative to Unicode. Many characters needed by medieval scholars are already defined in Unicode, but a great number of other characters, and especially abbreviation marks, are missing. The Private Use Area in Unicode may be used for encoding missing characters, but we would like to see as many special characters defined in the official area as possible. For this reason, the MUFI groups is pursuing two lines, (a) coordinating the allocation of medieval characters in the Private Use Area and (b) proposing missing medieval characters to Unicode.
MUFI character recommendation
Although the ultimate goal of the MUFI group is to add a representative and well defined inventory of medieval characters to the Unicode Standard it will be necessary to assign characters to the Private Use Area for some time. In order to establish a coordinated usage of this area, the MUFI group has published a recommendation for the selection of characters from the Unicode Standard and for characters to be assigned to the Private Use Area. This recommendation coordinates the usage of the PUA with several other fonts and font projects, notably the TITUS project and Junicode. The first version of this recommendation was published in 2003, the second in 2006, the third in 2009, and the fourth in 2015. The fourth version contains 1512 characters (of which 782 have been selected from various charts in the official part of the Standard, and 730 are located in the Private Use Area). It is compliant with v. 8.0 of the Unicode Standard and has a persistent URI at the University Library in Bergen:
Previous versions of the MUFI character recommendation can be downloaded here:
As a preparation for v. 3.0 and v. 4.0 of the recommendation, pipelines with new characters have been published:
MUFI font page
Several MUFI compliant fonts are presently being developed. All fonts contain a wide selection of special characters and make extensive use of the Private Use Area in the Unicode Standard. Fonts will be available either as shareware (for a modest fee) or as freeware. This page contains a list of all MUFI compliant fonts with details on design, format, availability etc. NEW! Junicode is now available in a version compliant with the MUFI character recommendation v. 4.0.
Medievist proposals to UnicodeMembers of the MUFI group and other scholars have submitted several proposals to Unicode for the inclusion of new characters in the Standard:
LINCUAHow should code points be allocated to the Private Use Area? MUFI is a recommendation for medievalists, but there are a number of other scripts, some of them neighbouring. In a recent paper, Andreas Stötzner, suggests a way forward:
Link will soon be added! (8 February 2019)
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Board 2016–Tarrin Wills, Copenhagen (Chair) Alex Speed Kjeldsen, Copenhagen (Deputy chair) Odd Einar Haugen, Bergen Beeke Stegmann, Copenhagen Board 2001–2015Odd Einar Haugen, Bergen Andreas Stötzner, Leipzig Alec McAllister, Leeds Tarrin Wills, Sydney/Aberdeen Other fonts & projectsPeter S. Baker, University of Virginia David J. Perry, Rye High School, New York Deborah W. Anderson, University of California at Berkeley / Rick McGowan, Unicode Juan-José Marcos García, Plasencia, Cáceres, Spain Jost Gippert and colleagues, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, and collaborating institutions Sebastian Kempgen, University of Bamberg Andreas Stötzner, Leipzig Links
The Menota handbook discusses the practicalities of encoding manuscript texts. Now published in version 2 (16 May 2008), TEI P5 compatible.
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Created 2 August 2001 by OEH. Last update 15 March 2019.