BONES.OTF 🦴

BONES.OTF is an open anatomical symbol system.

Human anatomy has rich semantic identity but very little general-purpose typographic representation. BONES gives anatomical structures stable object identities, Unicode-compatible representations, semantic text aliases, vector glyphs, and emoji-like rendering.

It is not Wingdings. 🧬

Ordinary letters are never repurposed. Authors write :femur: or :left_kidney:; without BONES installed, that text remains exactly meaningful. With BONES selected, a shaping engine turns the colon-delimited token into the corresponding anatomical glyph. Direct PUA characters are available when a machine-readable single character is required, but a PUA codepoint is not an official Unicode Consortium anatomical character.

What is in 0.1.0

The 0.1.0 release proved the complete path with 35 objects: 17 skeletal objects (including left/right femur identities) and 18 organs/tissues. Every object has a canonical ID, provenance, stable PUA assignment, shortcode, monochrome SVG, color SVG, font glyph, accessible label, and generated metadata.

The current development tree expands that vertical slice to 204 objects: 186 bones, 17 organs, and one tissue. It includes named cranial/facial bones, individual C1–C7, T1–T12, and L1–L5 vertebral levels, sacrum, coccyx, numbered ribs, carpals, metacarpals, hand phalanges, tarsals, metatarsals, and foot phalanges.

Artifacts include dist/BONES.otf, dist/BONES.ttf, dist/BONES-Color.otf, dist/BONES-Color.ttf, WOFF2 files, SVG assets, PNG exports, a zero-framework specimen site in docs/, and a small JavaScript package in packages/js/.

Open demo.html for the standalone live rendering demo, or docs/index.html for the full searchable specimen registry.

See it live 🚀

• Open the BONES demo — the x-ray assembly, color glyphs, semantic playground, and anatomy cards.
• Search the full specimen registry — filter bones, organs, and tissues; copy shortcodes or PUA characters.
• Download the WOFF2 webfonts — use the monochrome or COLRv1 color renderer in your own page.

The smallest honest demo is:

🦴 Fracture of the :left_femur:.
🧠 :brain:  🫀 :heart:  🫁 :left_lung:

The emoji are ordinary Unicode examples. The colon-delimited names are BONES semantic text; the font turns them into detailed anatomy glyphs when selected. If the font is missing, the source still says what the author meant. 🎨

Build

make install       # once, creates .venv and installs open build dependencies
make build         # validate, generate, compile, export, and build the specimen
make test          # build plus ontology, font, shaping, and web checks
make clean

The project version is authoritative in project.yaml; generated package and font metadata derive from it. The build uses the vendored DejaVu Sans base only for ordinary prose glyphs. This means Fracture of the :left_femur:. retains readable surrounding text when BONES is selected, while the semantic token shapes through a liga feature. The anatomical glyphs themselves originate only from the checked-in generated SVG vector sources. FontTools creates TrueType-outline .ttf, CFF .otf, compact WOFF2, and COLRv1 palette layers; no proprietary font application is required. See docs/licensing.md for the mixed provenance of the inherited prose outlines and original BONES glyphs.

For the user-facing examples and accessibility rules, read docs/using.md. ♿

Usage

<link rel="stylesheet" href="./dist/bones.css">
<span class="bones" aria-label="Femur">:femur:</span>
<span class="bones" role="img" aria-label="Left kidney">:left_kidney:</span>

<!-- A readable semantic fallback plus a color/emoji-like renderer. -->
<span class="bones-emoji" role="img" aria-label="Heart">:heart:</span>

The JavaScript helper resolves both semantic IDs and shortcodes:

import { get, unicodeFor, resolveShortcode } from "bones-otf";
get("anatomy:femur");
unicodeFor("anatomy:femur");
resolveShortcode(":heart:");

Private-use characters need an explicit accessible label in HTML. Do not expose U+E00B to a screen reader as if it were a standard Unicode character. See docs/accessibility.md and docs/anatomical-review.md.

Repository map 📚

• ontology/ — canonical anatomy objects and provenance.
• registry/ — append-only PUA assignments, aliases, and ligatures.
• glyphs/ — deterministic monochrome and color SVG masters.
• dist/ — font release artifacts and webfont CSS.
• packages/js/ — generated JavaScript/TypeScript metadata API.
• docs/ — searchable specimen site and project guidance.
• .github/workflows/ — reproducible validation and Pages deployment.

Identity and Unicode

The anatomy object is canonical. Its ID survives changes to filenames, labels, glyph outlines, and language. registry/codepoints.csv is append-only after a release: released PUA codepoints are never reassigned. The current range starts at U+E000, reserved inside this project only. unicode-proposal/ documents how the same IDs could later map to official Unicode characters without changing the object model.

Sources and scope

The ontology records UBERON identifiers where an exact open term is available, and the project records OpenStax Anatomy & Physiology as the human-skeletal coverage reference. The representative bone and organ glyphs are derived from cleaned, thresholded traces of public-domain 1918 Gray's Anatomy plates hosted by Wikimedia Commons; the plate manifest, raw scans, crop recipes, and deterministic trace script are kept under sources/gray-plates/. BONES ships vector derivatives, not proprietary modern medical illustrations. See docs/artwork-sources.md for the provenance and regeneration path.

Project status

The current tree is an independently usable expanded slice, not a claim that every adult skeletal substructure or view is clinically complete. Repeated carpals, phalanges, ribs, and tarsals have distinct canonical identities and may explicitly share a small-size glyph master. review_required identifies where an anatomy expert should review classification or outline before 1.0.

The public demo is a release-quality MVP, not a clinical reference tool. Please report anatomical corrections with sources; stable object IDs and released PUA assignments are never casually recycled. 🔬