Is there a Unicode font for Windows available that is as complete as Arial Unicode MS, but free, even for commercial use? [closed]

Question

I have to distribute a legacy application for Windows that unfortunately does not support Font Linking, but is supposed to support many language cultures, including all east Asian languages. The perfect font for that purpose would be to use Unicode MS, which is part of Microsoft Office, which is not part of my target systems. So I would have to obain a license for Arial Unicode, which is currently no option.

So I am looking for a free Unicode font, that covers the same range that Arial Unicode MS does, but which may be freely distributed, even in a closed-sorce commercial project. Is there any such font available at all?

Answer 1

The Code2000 font has almost full coverage of the Basic Multilingual Plane (much larger than that of Arial Unicode MS, though perhaps without some of its characters in its modern versions). It is available e.g. from http://www.alanwood.net/downloads/. However, there are several issues with it:

• Its status is unclear. It used to be shareware, with a registration fee of $5 or so, but the author’s web site is down, and it is not clear whether it was he who made the font available at SourceForge as freeware.
• It’s a serif font, which might not suit your overall visual design.
• It’s not typographically ambitious (to put it diplomatically).
• It has been designed to work with font smoothing and may look like crap without it (not much of a problem these days I guess).

Yet, it seems to best match the description. There are many other fonts that might be considered, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_font#List_of_Unicode_fonts, but they have more serious drawbacks for most uses (e.g., monospace design or bitmap format or limited character repertoire).