Add All Genders

[greenreport]

Font Project Git Repo URL:

https://github.com/greenreport/All-Genders

Super short description of the Font Family:

ALL-GENDERS FONT
(by Rassam Abdo Naji Alawdi) This Font (3 Styles) is free for personal and commercial use.

And this is how it works: Download the All-Genders Font and enter the key combination (Shortcut) after a male ending.

Requirements:

I understand that Google Fonts will publish only fonts that matches its requirements, and I can confirm the project meets them (by ticking the cases, or putting x between the square brackets in text mode):

• [x] The entire font project is licensed under the OFL
• [x] There is no "Reserved Font Name" mention in the OFL license
• [x] Family name is unique according to namecheck.fontdata.com
• [x] The font supports at least GF Latin Core glyphset
• [x] The repository respect the upstream repo structure
• [x] The source files are available in the repository
• [x] I read, agree and comply with the full contributing requirements
• [x] I am the author of the font or the author agreed to this submission
• [x] I will maintain the repository

Image:

[tiroj]

Do you know if this sign is being proposed for inclusion in the Unicode Standard? A custom sign implemented in a single font and relying on a particular keyboard shortcut (on what system? with what keyboard?) is not available for text interchange purposes. I downloaded and examined the fonts, and the all genders sign is currently mapped to U+02DD, i.e. hijacking the Unicode codepoint for the Hungarian double-acute diacritic sign. This is not a good idea.

If this initiative has the support of UN agencies, and is something more than an awareness-raising publicity campaign about gender inclusive language, i.e. that this represents a serious intent to promote use of this sign, including its use in the documents and publications of those UN agencies, then it is something the could be written up as a character encoding proposal and submitted to the Unicode Consortium for review and consideration.

[m4rc1e]

Thanks for the submission.

I agree with all of John's points. The all gender signed has also been mapped to some unicodes used for punctuation such as U+0022 (quotedbl) so passages of English text will look strange.

@greenreport I see Rassam Abdo is the author of this font. What was your involvement? it doesn't look like Rassam releases his fonts under the OFL license.

[greenreport]

Do you know if this sign is being proposed for inclusion in the Unicode Standard? A custom sign implemented in a single font and relying on a particular keyboard shortcut (on what system? with what keyboard?) is not available for text interchange purposes. I downloaded and examined the fonts, and the all genders sign is currently mapped to U+02DD, i.e. hijacking the Unicode codepoint for the Hungarian double-acute diacritic sign. This is not a good idea.

If this initiative has the support of UN agencies, and is something more than an awareness-raising publicity campaign about gender inclusive language, i.e. that this represents a serious intent to promote use of this sign, including its use in the documents and publications of those UN agencies, then it is something the could be written up as a character encoding proposal and submitted to the Unicode Consortium for review and consideration.

Thank you very much for your suggestion. To my knowledge, the font has not yet been submitted to Unicode. It’s the first version. From my point of view, it definitely makes sense. I will pass on.

[greenreport]

Thanks for the submission.

I agree with all of John's points. The all gender signed has also been mapped to some unicodes used for punctuation such as U+0022 (quotedbl) so passages of English text will look strange.

@greenreport I see Rassam Abdo is the author of this font. What was your involvement? it doesn't look like Rassam releases his fonts under the OFL license.

That is correct. Mr Rassam is the author of the font. I was commissioned by the Serviceplan Group to realise the font in a technical way. The unicode mapping of the "All-Gender Sign" was already done.

The Serviceplan Group was commissioned by UN Women. The concept is by Serviceplan Group. Mr. Rassam is the designer/author of the font and was commissioned by Serviceplan. He knows about the submission to Google Fonts and the OFL licensing.

I am taking care of the technical details and submission it self in this case.

https://arabstates.unwomen.org/en/stories/news/2022/03/gender-equality-in-the-workplace-starts-with-a-job-ad

https://www.serviceplan.com/en/news/unwomen-all-genders-sign.html

[greenreport]

@m4rc1e

Guess, we have a solution for the Unicode mapping. The "All Gender Sign" is now a "liga" feature. Thank you for the suggestion. Now you can reach the character with following charakter combination/ligature:

Arabic: "٭" and "ة" (U+066D and U+0629), asterisk-arabic and teh marbuta Latin: "*" and "a" (U+002A and U+0061), asterisk and the lower case "a"

[davelab6]

@greenreport thanks for proposing this project for inclusion. The connection to a government agency and what is now an unusual OpenType feature, mean we'll take quite a while to make progress on this, as it goes into an internal review process that is low priority for the GF team.

[davelab6]

Reassigning to me to deal with the policy issue.

[davelab6]

Discussing upstream @ https://github.com/greenreport/All-Genders/issues/1