Last Resort Font EULA

Contents

Last Resort Font

The Last Resort font is a collection of glyphs to represent types of Unicode characters. These glyphs are designed to allow users to recognize that an encoded value is one of the following:

a specific type of Unicode character

in the Private Use Area (no private agreement exists)

unassigned (reserved for future assignment)

one of the illegal character codes.

These glyphs are used as the backup of "last resort" to any other font; if the font cannot represent any particular Unicode character, the appropriate "missing" glyph from the Last Resort font is used instead. This provides users with the ability to tell what sort of character it is, and gives them a clue as to what type of font they would need to display the characters correctly. (For more information, see The Unicode Standard, Version 5.0, Section 5.3 Unknown and Missing Characters.)

Overall, there are a number of advantages to using the Last Resort font for unrepresentable characters.

Operating systems are freed from the overhead of providing a full Unicode font.

Users see something more meaningful than a black box for unrepresentable characters.

Users familiar with the scripts being represented with the Last Resort font will readily identify what needs to be installed to represent the text.

Users unfamiliar with the missing scripts are shown easily-identified symbols rather than lengthy strings of unidentifiable characters.

The Last Resort font includes glyphs for scripts proposed for future encoding in Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646. There is no guarantee that all of these scripts will ever be encoded in future versions of the standard; the script names are taken from the UTC/WG2 Roadmap dated 2001-06-14.

Unicode blocks are illustrated by a representative glyph from the block, chosen to be as distinct as possible from glyphs of other blocks. A square surrounding frame provides a common, recognizable element and embedded within the edge of this frame, only visible at large size are a form of the block name and its character range to help identification.

There are two special glyphs in the font. One of the glyphs represents any unassigned character from any block. The other glyph represents the noncharacter character code values (U+FDD0..U+FDEF, U+FFFE, U+FFFF, U+1FFFE, U+1FFFF, U+2FFFE, U+2FFFF, U+EFFFE, U+EFFFF).

Example glyphs were chosen in a number of ways. Almost all of the Brahmic scripts show the initial consonant ka. Latin uses the letter A because it's the first letter, and because in each Latin block there is a letter A so they can be easily differentiated. Greek and Cyrillic use their last letters, omega and ya, because they are so distinctive. Most other alphabets and syllabaries use their initial letter where distinctive.

The Last Resort glyphs were drawn by Michael Everson of Evertype. An HTML table of glyphs is also located in Apple's full Last Resort glyph table.

End User License Agreement

Apple has made the Last Resort font available under the following end user license:

PLEASE READ THIS FONT SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT (“LICENSE”) CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THE FONT SOFTWARE. BY USING THE FONT SOFTWARE, YOU ARE AGREEING TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE, DO NOT USE THE FONT SOFTWARE. IF THE FONT SOFTWARE WAS ACCESSED ELECTRONICALLY, CLICK “DISAGREE/DECLINE”. 1. General The software and documentation accompanying this License whether on disk, in read only memory, on any other media or in any other form (collectively the “Font Software”) are licensed, not sold, to you by the Unicode Consortium (“Unicode”) for use only under the terms of this License, and Unicode reserves all rights not expressly granted to you. The License granted herein is granted under Unicode’s and its licensors’ intellectual property rights in the Font Software and does not include any other intellectual property rights. You own the media on which the Font Software is recorded but Unicode and/or Unicode’s licensor(s) retain ownership of the Font Software itself. The terms of this License will govern any software upgrades provided by Unicode that replace and/or supplement the original Font Software product, unless such upgrade is accompanied by a separate license in which case the terms of that license will govern. 2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions In consideration of your agreement to abide by the terms of this License, and subject to such terms, Unicode grants you a personal, non-exclusive license, to use, reproduce, and redistribute the Font Software. If you redistribute the Font Software, you must retain this entire license in all such redistributions. Except as and only to the extent expressly permitted in this License or by applicable law, you may not modify, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, or create derivative works of the Font Software or any part thereof. 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The foregoing limitations will apply even if the above stated remedy fails of its essential purpose. 6. Export Control You may not use or otherwise export or re-export the Font Software except as authorized by United States law and the laws of the jurisdiction in which the Font Software was obtained. In particular, but without limitation, the Font Software may not be exported or re-exported (a) into any U.S. embargoed countries or (b) to anyone on the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals or the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Denied Persons List or Entity List. By using the Font Software, you represent and warrant that you are not located in any such country or on any such list. You also agree that you will not use the Font Software for any purpose prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missile, or chemical or biological weapons. 7. 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Any translation of this License is done for local requirements and in the event of a dispute between the English and any non-English version, the English version of this License shall govern.
If you agree to the above license agreement, you may click on the button below to download the Last Resort font: