View source for Lucida Sans Unicode

{{Short description|Humanist sans-serif typeface}}
{{infobox typeface
| image            = Lucida Sans Unicode specimen.svg
| familyname       = [[Lucida (font)|Lucida]]
| style            = [[Sans-serif]]
| classifications  = [[Sans-serif#Classification|Humanist]]
| creator          = [[Charles Bigelow (type designer)|Charles Bigelow]]
[[Kris Holmes]]
| foundry          = Bigelow & Holmes
| releasedate      = 1993
| sample           = [[File:Lucida Sans Unicode sample.svg|240px]]
}}

'''Lucida Sans Unicode''' is an [[OpenType]] [[typeface]] from the design studio of Bigelow & Holmes,<ref>All Bigelow & Holmes Lucida typefaces are distributed by the designers through [http://lucidafonts.com/ The Lucida Fonts Store] and a subset of Lucida fonts is distributed by [http://www.ascendercorp(dot)com/ Ascender Corporation]{{dead link|date=January 2018|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}} acquired by [http://www.monotypeimaging.com/ Monotype Imaging Holdings, Inc.] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050208234102/http://monotypeimaging.com/ |date=2005-02-08 }} in December 2010.</ref> designed to support the most commonly used characters defined in version 1.0 of the [[Unicode]] standard. It is a [[sans-serif]] variant of the [[Lucida (typeface)|Lucida]] font family and supports [[Latin script|Latin]], [[Greek script|Greek]], [[Cyrillic script|Cyrillic]] and [[Hebrew script|Hebrew]] scripts, as well as all the characters used in the [[International Phonetic Alphabet]].

It is the first Unicode encoded font to include non-Latin scripts (Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew). It was designed by [[Kris Holmes]] and [[Charles Bigelow (type designer)|Charles Bigelow]] in 1993, and was first shipped with the Microsoft [[Windows NT 3.1]] operating system.

The font comes pre-installed with all Microsoft Windows versions since [[Windows 98]]. A nearly identical font, called [[Lucida Grande]], shipped as the default system font with Apple's [[Mac OS X]] operating system, until switching to [[Helvetica Neue]] in 2014 with [[OS X Yosemite]]; Lucida Grande added support for Arabic and Thai scripts.

Letters in the [[International Phonetic Alphabet]], particularly upside down letters, are aligned for easy reading upside down. Thus, the font is among the most ideal for [[Transformation of text|upside-down text]], compared to other Unicode typefaces, which have the turned "t" and "h" characters aligned with their tops at the base line and thus appear out of line.

The typeface has a flaw in the [[Underscore#Unicode|combining low line]] character (U+0332) and the combining double low line character (U+0333), which are rendered as a blank or as a simple tiny underline when font-size is less than 238 point or so in word processors.

Other well-known Unicode fonts include [[Code2000]], [[Arial Unicode MS]], and the various [[Free software Unicode typefaces]].

==See also==
* [[List of typefaces]]
* [[Unicode typeface]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}
* [http://cajun.cs.nott.ac.uk/wiley/journals/epobetan/pdf/volume6/issue3/bigelow.pdf "The design of a Unicode font"], by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. Electronic Publishing, Vol. 6(3), 289-305 (September 1993).

==External links==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20180131034016/http://lucidafonts.com/fonts Lucida Fonts Matrix]
* [http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/font.aspx?FMID=1263 Microsoft typography: Lucida Sans Unicode]
* [http://czyborra.com/unifont/#Lucida Lucida Sans Unicode], described by Roman Czyborra.

{{Microsoft Windows Typefaces}}

[[Category:Unicode typefaces]]
[[Category:Windows XP typefaces]]
[[Category:Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1993]]
[[Category:Humanist sans-serif typefaces]]
[[Category:Typefaces designed by Kris Holmes]]
[[Category:Typefaces designed by Charles Bigelow (type designer)]]
[[Category:IPA typefaces]]

{{Typography-stub}}