GNU FreeFont (also known as Free UCS Outline Fonts) is a family of free

OpenType OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark ...

TrueType TrueType is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the most common format for fonts on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating ...

and

WOFF The Web Open Font Format (WOFF) is a font format for use in web pages. WOFF files are OpenType or TrueType fonts, with format-specific compression applied and additional XML metadata added. The two primary goals are first to distinguish font file ...

vector fonts, implementing as much of the Universal Character Set (UCS) as possible, aside from the very large CJK Asian character set. The project was initiated in 2002 by Primož Peterlin and is now maintained by Steve White. The family includes three faces: FreeMono, FreeSans, and FreeSerif, each in four styles (Regular, Italic/Oblique, Bold, and Bold Italic/Oblique). The fonts are licensed under the GPL-3.0-or-later license with the Font-exception-2.0, ensuring they may be both freely distributed and embedded or otherwise utilized within a document without the document itself being covered by the GPL. The fonts can be obtained ''

libre Libre may refer to: Computing * Libre software, free software * Libre Computer Project, developer of open-hardware single-board computers Medicine * FreeStyle Libre, a glucose monitoring device Media * Libre Times, news site which people can fr ...

'' from

GNU Savannah GNU Savannah is a project of the Free Software Foundation initiated by Loïc Dachary, which serves as a collaborative software development management system for free Software projects. Savannah currently offers CVS, GNU arch, Subversion, Git, ...

. They are also packaged on certain Linux distributions, including

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All ...

and

Arch Linux Arch Linux () is an independently developed, x86-64 general-purpose Linux distribution that strives to provide the latest stable versions of most software by following a rolling-release model. The default installation is a minimal base system, ...

Design

The glyphs of GNU FreeFont come from many sources, all of which are compatible with the GPL. The core Latin characters are derived from the

Type 1 font PostScript fonts are font files encoded in outline font specifications developed by Adobe Systems for professional digital typesetting. This system uses PostScript file format to encode font information. "PostScript fonts" may also separately be ...

s donated by URW++ Design & Development GmbH to the

Ghostscript Ghostscript is a suite of software based on an interpreter for Adobe Systems' PostScript and Portable Document Format (PDF) page description languages. Its main purposes are the rasterization or rendering of such page description language file ...

project. Specifically, the design notes of GNU FreeFont state that: * FreeSerif is based on URW++ Nimbus Roman No. 9 L, which is similar to

Times Time is the continued sequence of existence and events, and a fundamental quantity of measuring systems. Time or times may also refer to: Temporal measurement * Time in physics, defined by its measurement * Time standard, civil time speci ...

* FreeSans is based on URW++

Nimbus Sans L Nimbus Sans is a sans-serif typeface created by URW++, based on Helvetica. Nimbus Sans It is a version using URW++ font source. The family supports Western Europe, East Europe, Turkish, Baltic, and Romanian languages. The font names ending with ...

, which is similar to

Helvetica Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (1890s) ...

* FreeMono is based on URW++

Nimbus Mono L Nimbus Mono is a monospaced typeface created by URW Studio in 1984, and eventually released under the GPL and AFPL (as Type 1 font for Ghostscript) in 1996 and LPPL in 2009. In 2017, the font, alongside other Core 35 fonts, has been additionall ...

, which is similar to

Courier A courier is a person or organisation that delivers a message, package or letter from one place or person to another place or person. Typically, a courier provides their courier service on a commercial contract basis; however, some couriers are ...

The Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian, Hebrew, Arabic, and

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...

(IPA) characters are partially based on

Omega Omega (; capital: Ω, lowercase: ω; Ancient Greek ὦ, later ὦ μέγα, Modern Greek ωμέγα) is the twenty-fourth and final letter in the Greek alphabet. In the Greek numeric system/ isopsephy ( gematria), it has a value of 800. The ...

, which is an extension of

TeX Tex may refer to: People and fictional characters * Tex (nickname), a list of people and fictional characters with the nickname * Joe Tex (1933–1982), stage name of American soul singer Joseph Arrington Jr. Entertainment * ''Tex'', the Italian ...

. The Greek characters are also based on a set of Greek Type 1 fonts compiled by Angelo Haritsis, in addition to Alexey Kryukov's Tempora LCG Unicode. The Cyrillic range also includes Valek Filipov's Gnome Cyrillic and Tempora LCG Unicode. Valek Filippov further added some composite

Latin Extended-A Latin Extended-A is a Unicode block and is the third block of the Unicode standard. It encodes Latin letters from the Latin ISO character sets other than Latin-1 (which is already encoded in the Latin-1 Supplement block) and also legacy characte ...

glyphs. The Devanagari range in serif is from the Velthuis TeX font, while the range in sans is based on Gargi; Bengali and Gurmukhi ranges are based on Harsh Kumar's BharatBhasha project and others. The Gujarati and Oriya ranges are based on Samyak fonts. The Ethiopic range is based on the Ethiopic metafont project at the

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (german: link=no, Universität Hamburg, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vo ...

Unicode coverage

Venn diagram showing Greek, Latin and Cyrillic letters

In the latest release of 2012-05-03, FreeSerif includes 10,537 glyphs, FreeSans includes 6,272 glyphs, and FreeMono includes 4,178 glyphs. The family covers characters from the following

Unicode block A Unicode block is one of several contiguous ranges of numeric character codes ( code points) of the Unicode character set that are defined by the Unicode Consortium for administrative and documentation purposes. Typically, proposals such as the ...

s: *Basic Latin *Latin-1 Supplement *Latin Extended-A *Latin Extended-B *International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) Extensions *Spacing Modifier Letters *Combining Diacritical Marks *Greek *Cyrillic *Cyrillic Supplement *Arabic *Hebrew *N'Ko *Thaana *Syriac *Armenian *Georgian *Devanagari *Bengali *Gujarati *Gurmukhi *Oriya *Sinhala *Tamil *Malayalam *Tai Le *Ethiopic *Thai *Kayah Li *Cherokee *Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics *Hanunóo *Buginese *Vai *Phonetic Extensions *Phonetic Extensions Supplement *Diacritical marks *Cyrillic Extended-B *Tifinagh *Osmanya *Coptic *Glagolitic *Gothic *Ugaritic *Old Persian *Phoenician *Runic *Braille *Supplemental Arrows-A *Latin Extended Additional *Greek Extended *General Punctuation *Super and Sub scripts *Currency Symbols *Letterlike Symbols *Number Forms *Arrows *Mathematical Operators *Miscellaneous Technical Symbols *Enclosed Alphanumerics *Box Drawing *Block Elements *Geometric Shapes *Miscellaneous Symbols *Dingbats *Alphabetic Presentation Forms *Vietnamese *Western music *Byzantine music *Mah Jong tiles *Dominoes

References

External links

GNU FreeFontFree UCS Outline Fonts Project
{{GNU Free software Unicode typefaces

FreeFont GNU FreeFont (also known as Free UCS Outline Fonts) is a family of free OpenType, TrueType and WOFF vector fonts, implementing as much of the Universal Character Set, Universal Character Set (UCS) as possible, aside from the very large CJK Asian ...

Computer-related introductions in 2002

Design

Unicode coverage

See also

References

External links