The first version of the UFO format was created in 2003. The most recent version, UFO 3, was released in 2012.
The idea for the Unified Font Object originated with a customized version of the font editor Fontographer 3.5. Petr van Blokland, together with Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland, and with assistance from David Berlow and Steven Paul of the Font Bureau, created and distributed on a subscription basis a customized version of Fontographer called RoboFog in 1996. RoboFog allowed users to script in Python, a language Just's brother Guido van Rossum invented two years prior in 1994. The tool became very popular among type designers because of the ability to automate tasks.
In the consortium's view, font data should be independent of font editors to avoid issues like Software rot, which the field of type design is particularly prone to, due to the long period of time that fonts take to develop and the relative lack of variety in font editing applications.
In 2009, UFO version 2 was announced at RoboThon 2009, bringing minor changes to the format. A variety of applications outside of FontLab using the UFO format started to be written at around this time, such as Leming's kerning application MetricsMachine, van Blokland's interpolation application, Superpolator, and Frederik Berlaen's parametric design application, KalliCulator.
At the request of David Berlow and Petr van Blokland, Frederik Berlaen started work in 2009 on a font editor that used the UFO as a native format. Because of the network of apps now being used in the "UFO workflow", "the dependency of FontLab as a central drawing environment had created a bottleneck", in their view. Berlaen presented his font editor RoboFont at ATypI 2011 in Reykjavík, and gave it the tagline, "The missing UFO font editor".
The fourth version of the format, "UFO 4", is currently in the concept phase.
A common criticism of the format is that its structure (of sometimes hundreds of GLIF files) does not work well with online file hosting services like Dropbox. This criticism led to the proposal and adoption of the "UFOZ" format, which is a UFO (version 3 and up) compressed into a ZIP archive.
The following are some applications that support the UFO format either natively or as an officially-supported interchange format.
"Contributors". unifiedfontobject.org. Archived from the original on 2021-11-05. Retrieved 2021-11-05. https://unifiedfontobject.org/contributors/
"Contributors". unifiedfontobject.org. Archived from the original on 2021-11-05. Retrieved 2021-11-05. https://unifiedfontobject.org/contributors/
"Overview". unifiedfontobject.org. Archived from the original on 2021-11-05. Retrieved 2021-11-05. http://unifiedfontobject.org/
"RoboFab Release History". 2008-10-04. Archived from the original on 2008-10-04. Retrieved 2022-02-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20081004212117/http://www.robofab.org/history.html
"Overview". unifiedfontobject.org. Archived from the original on 2021-11-05. Retrieved 2021-11-05. http://unifiedfontobject.org/
Arista, Roberto (Autumn 2016). "RoboTools: L'influenza dell'open source sugli strumenti di produzione del carattere tipografico" [RoboTools: The influence of open source on typeface production tools]. Progetto Grafico 30 (in Italian and English). AIAP Edizioni: 33–39. https://archive.org/details/arista-roberto-robotools-progetto-grafico-30/
Arista, Roberto (Autumn 2016). "RoboTools: L'influenza dell'open source sugli strumenti di produzione del carattere tipografico" [RoboTools: The influence of open source on typeface production tools]. Progetto Grafico 30 (in Italian and English). AIAP Edizioni: 33–39. https://archive.org/details/arista-roberto-robotools-progetto-grafico-30/
Middendorp, Jan (2004). Dutch type. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. p. 187. ISBN 90-6450-460-1. OCLC 54880333. 90-6450-460-1
Arista, Roberto (Autumn 2016). "RoboTools: L'influenza dell'open source sugli strumenti di produzione del carattere tipografico" [RoboTools: The influence of open source on typeface production tools]. Progetto Grafico 30 (in Italian and English). AIAP Edizioni: 33–39. https://archive.org/details/arista-roberto-robotools-progetto-grafico-30/
Middendorp, Jan (2004). Dutch type. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. p. 187. ISBN 90-6450-460-1. OCLC 54880333. 90-6450-460-1
Kiel, Ben (May 4, 2005). "An Introduction to RoboFab". Typographica. Archived from the original on 2022-02-15. Retrieved 2022-02-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20220215000339/https://typographica.org/on-typography/an-introduction-to-robofab/
Middendorp, Jan (2004). Dutch type. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. p. 187. ISBN 90-6450-460-1. OCLC 54880333. 90-6450-460-1
Arista, Roberto (Autumn 2016). "RoboTools: L'influenza dell'open source sugli strumenti di produzione del carattere tipografico" [RoboTools: The influence of open source on typeface production tools]. Progetto Grafico 30 (in Italian and English). AIAP Edizioni: 33–39. https://archive.org/details/arista-roberto-robotools-progetto-grafico-30/
Siracusa, John (2001-04-02). "Mac OS X 10.0". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 2022-02-21. Retrieved 2022-02-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20220221200435/https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2001/04/macos-x/
Middendorp, Jan (2004). Dutch type. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. p. 187. ISBN 90-6450-460-1. OCLC 54880333. 90-6450-460-1
Kiel, Ben (May 4, 2005). "An Introduction to RoboFab". Typographica. Archived from the original on 2022-02-15. Retrieved 2022-02-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20220215000339/https://typographica.org/on-typography/an-introduction-to-robofab/
"RoboFab Release History". 2008-10-04. Archived from the original on 2008-10-04. Retrieved 2022-02-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20081004212117/http://www.robofab.org/history.html
Kiel, Ben (May 4, 2005). "An Introduction to RoboFab". Typographica. Archived from the original on 2022-02-15. Retrieved 2022-02-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20220215000339/https://typographica.org/on-typography/an-introduction-to-robofab/
Arista, Roberto (Autumn 2016). "RoboTools: L'influenza dell'open source sugli strumenti di produzione del carattere tipografico" [RoboTools: The influence of open source on typeface production tools]. Progetto Grafico 30 (in Italian and English). AIAP Edizioni: 33–39. https://archive.org/details/arista-roberto-robotools-progetto-grafico-30/
"RoboFab Release History". 2008-10-04. Archived from the original on 2008-10-04. Retrieved 2022-02-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20081004212117/http://www.robofab.org/history.html
"RoboFab Release History". 2008-10-04. Archived from the original on 2008-10-04. Retrieved 2022-02-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20081004212117/http://www.robofab.org/history.html
Kiel, Ben (May 4, 2005). "An Introduction to RoboFab". Typographica. Archived from the original on 2022-02-15. Retrieved 2022-02-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20220215000339/https://typographica.org/on-typography/an-introduction-to-robofab/
"RoboFab Release History". 2008-10-04. Archived from the original on 2008-10-04. Retrieved 2022-02-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20081004212117/http://www.robofab.org/history.html
Arista, Roberto (Autumn 2016). "RoboTools: L'influenza dell'open source sugli strumenti di produzione del carattere tipografico" [RoboTools: The influence of open source on typeface production tools]. Progetto Grafico 30 (in Italian and English). AIAP Edizioni: 33–39. https://archive.org/details/arista-roberto-robotools-progetto-grafico-30/
Kiel, Ben (May 4, 2005). "An Introduction to RoboFab". Typographica. Archived from the original on 2022-02-15. Retrieved 2022-02-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20220215000339/https://typographica.org/on-typography/an-introduction-to-robofab/
"UFO 2". unifiedfontobject.org. Archived from the original on 2020-10-19. Retrieved 2022-02-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20201019185141/https://unifiedfontobject.org/versions/ufo2/index.html
Arista, Roberto (Autumn 2016). "RoboTools: L'influenza dell'open source sugli strumenti di produzione del carattere tipografico" [RoboTools: The influence of open source on typeface production tools]. Progetto Grafico 30 (in Italian and English). AIAP Edizioni: 33–39. https://archive.org/details/arista-roberto-robotools-progetto-grafico-30/
Peter Bilak; François Rappo; Pierre Keller (2010). Typeface as program : applied research and development in typography = Le caractère typographique comme programme : recherche appliquée et développement en typographie. Lausanne, Switzerland: École cantonale d'art de Lausanne. ISBN 978-3-03764-072-2. OCLC 630189661. 978-3-03764-072-2
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RoboFont. "The history of RoboFont". robofont.com. Archived from the original on 2022-01-26. Retrieved 2022-02-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20220126205618/https://robofont.com/documentation/topics/robofont-history/
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"Robothon 2012, RoboHint, and the Gerrit Noordzij Prize". Typographica. Retrieved 2022-02-14. https://typographica.org/on-typography/robothon-2012-robohint-and-the-gerrit-noordzij-prize/
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"UFO 3". unifiedfontobject.org. Archived from the original on 2022-01-20. Retrieved 2022-02-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20220120213047/https://unifiedfontobject.org/versions/ufo3/index.html
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"Working with UFO | Glyphs". glyphsapp.com. Archived from the original on 2021-11-05. Retrieved 2021-11-05. https://glyphsapp.com/tutorials/working-with-ufo
"Font Formats". help.fontlab.com. Archived from the original on 2021-11-05. Retrieved 2021-11-05. https://help.fontlab.com/fontlab/7/manual/Font-Formats/
"Technical Bulletin: UFO 3 Export". fontforge.org. Archived from the original on 2021-11-05. Retrieved 2021-11-05. https://fontforge.org/en-US/bulletins/ufo3_2018_1/
"UFO 4". unifiedfontobject.org. Archived from the original on 2022-02-21. Retrieved 2022-02-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20220221214950/https://unifiedfontobject.org/versions/ufo4/
"Font Development Best Practices: UFO". silnrsi.github.io. Archived from the original on 2022-02-22. Retrieved 2022-02-22. https://web.archive.org/web/20220222001044/https://silnrsi.github.io/FDBP/en-US/UFO.html
"Font Development Best Practices: UFO". silnrsi.github.io. Archived from the original on 2022-02-22. Retrieved 2022-02-22. https://web.archive.org/web/20220222001044/https://silnrsi.github.io/FDBP/en-US/UFO.html
"Font Development Best Practices: UFO". silnrsi.github.io. Archived from the original on 2022-02-22. Retrieved 2022-02-22. https://web.archive.org/web/20220222001044/https://silnrsi.github.io/FDBP/en-US/UFO.html
"Glyph Interchange Format". unifiedfontobject.org. Retrieved 2022-02-14. https://unifiedfontobject.org/versions/ufo3/glyphs/glif/
"UFO: Unified Font Object". luc.devroye.org. Retrieved 2022-02-14. http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-43145.html
"features.fea". unifiedfontobject.org. Archived from the original on 2020-10-18. Retrieved 2022-02-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20201018044040/https://unifiedfontobject.org/versions/ufo3/features.fea/
Simonson, Mark (2014-06-12). "I didn't quite realize until recently: .ufo + Dropbox kind of sucks". @marksimonson. Retrieved 2020-05-28. https://twitter.com/marksimonson/status/477277781726736384
"UFO 3". unifiedfontobject.org. Archived from the original on 2022-01-20. Retrieved 2022-02-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20220120213047/https://unifiedfontobject.org/versions/ufo3/index.html
"Font Development Best Practices: UFO". silnrsi.github.io. Archived from the original on 2022-02-22. Retrieved 2022-02-22. https://web.archive.org/web/20220222001044/https://silnrsi.github.io/FDBP/en-US/UFO.html
"Font Development Best Practices: UFO". silnrsi.github.io. Archived from the original on 2022-02-22. Retrieved 2022-02-22. https://web.archive.org/web/20220222001044/https://silnrsi.github.io/FDBP/en-US/UFO.html
Leming, Tal, ufonormalizer: Script to normalize the XML and other data inside of a UFO., retrieved 2022-02-22 https://github.com/unified-font-object/ufoNormalizer
Arista, Roberto (Autumn 2016). "RoboTools: L'influenza dell'open source sugli strumenti di produzione del carattere tipografico" [RoboTools: The influence of open source on typeface production tools]. Progetto Grafico 30 (in Italian and English). AIAP Edizioni: 33–39. https://archive.org/details/arista-roberto-robotools-progetto-grafico-30/
"Robothon 2012, RoboHint, and the Gerrit Noordzij Prize". Typographica. Retrieved 2022-02-14. https://typographica.org/on-typography/robothon-2012-robohint-and-the-gerrit-noordzij-prize/
"FontCreator features and benefits". www.high-logic.com. Retrieved 2022-09-23. https://www.high-logic.com/font-editor/fontcreator/features-and-benefits
"Technical Bulletin: UFO 3 Export". fontforge.org. Archived from the original on 2021-11-05. Retrieved 2021-11-05. https://fontforge.org/en-US/bulletins/ufo3_2018_1/
Willis, Nathan (2014-12-08). "A quick look at the new FontForge release [LWN.net]". lwn.net. Archived from the original on 2022-02-21. Retrieved 2022-02-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20220221234507/https://lwn.net/Articles/624623/
Willis, Nathan. "Font and type development at LGM 2014". lwn.net. Archived from the original on 2022-02-21. Retrieved 2022-02-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20220221233443/https://lwn.net/Articles/592959/
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"Font Formats". help.fontlab.com. Archived from the original on 2021-11-05. Retrieved 2021-11-05. https://help.fontlab.com/fontlab/7/manual/Font-Formats/
"Working with UFO | Glyphs". glyphsapp.com. Archived from the original on 2021-11-05. Retrieved 2021-11-05. https://glyphsapp.com/tutorials/working-with-ufo
"Font Development Best Practices: UFO". silnrsi.github.io. Archived from the original on 2022-02-22. Retrieved 2022-02-22. https://web.archive.org/web/20220222001044/https://silnrsi.github.io/FDBP/en-US/UFO.html
Peter Bilak; François Rappo; Pierre Keller (2010). Typeface as program : applied research and development in typography = Le caractère typographique comme programme : recherche appliquée et développement en typographie. Lausanne, Switzerland: École cantonale d'art de Lausanne. ISBN 978-3-03764-072-2. OCLC 630189661. 978-3-03764-072-2
"Metapolator – Free Font Editor for Designing Typeface Families". metapolator.com. Retrieved 2022-02-21. http://metapolator.com/home
Arista, Roberto (Autumn 2016). "RoboTools: L'influenza dell'open source sugli strumenti di produzione del carattere tipografico" [RoboTools: The influence of open source on typeface production tools]. Progetto Grafico 30 (in Italian and English). AIAP Edizioni: 33–39. https://archive.org/details/arista-roberto-robotools-progetto-grafico-30/
"Robothon 2012, RoboHint, and the Gerrit Noordzij Prize". Typographica. Retrieved 2022-02-14. https://typographica.org/on-typography/robothon-2012-robohint-and-the-gerrit-noordzij-prize/
Arista, Roberto (Autumn 2016). "RoboTools: L'influenza dell'open source sugli strumenti di produzione del carattere tipografico" [RoboTools: The influence of open source on typeface production tools]. Progetto Grafico 30 (in Italian and English). AIAP Edizioni: 33–39. https://archive.org/details/arista-roberto-robotools-progetto-grafico-30/
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Arista, Roberto (Autumn 2016). "RoboTools: L'influenza dell'open source sugli strumenti di produzione del carattere tipografico" [RoboTools: The influence of open source on typeface production tools]. Progetto Grafico 30 (in Italian and English). AIAP Edizioni: 33–39. https://archive.org/details/arista-roberto-robotools-progetto-grafico-30/
"Robothon 2012, RoboHint, and the Gerrit Noordzij Prize". Typographica. Retrieved 2022-02-14. https://typographica.org/on-typography/robothon-2012-robohint-and-the-gerrit-noordzij-prize/
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