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

OpenType OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. Derived from TrueType, it retains TrueType's basic structure but adds many intricate data structures for describing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corpora ...

TrueType TrueType is an Computer font#Outline fonts, outline font standardization, standard developed by Apple Inc., Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe Inc., Adobe's PostScript fonts#Type 1, Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the ...

and WOFF 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'' 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, Me ...

. They are also packaged on certain Linux distributions, including

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

and

Arch Linux Arch Linux () is an Open-source software, open source, rolling release Linux distribution. Arch Linux is kept up-to-date by regularly updating the individual pieces of software that it comprises. Arch Linux is intentionally minimal, and is meant ...

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 ...

s donated by URW++ 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 of documents in these language,, the display or prin ...

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 * FreeSans is based on URW++ Nimbus Sans L, which is similar to

Helvetica Helvetica, also known by its original name 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 f ...

* FreeMono is based on URW++ Nimbus Mono L, which is similar to

Courier A courier is a person or organization 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 standard written representation ...

(IPA) characters are partially based on

Omega Omega (, ; uppercase Ω, lowercase ω; Ancient Greek ὦ, later ὦ μέγα, Modern Greek ωμέγα) is the twenty-fourth and last letter in the Greek alphabet. In the Greek numerals, Greek numeric system/isopsephy (gematria), it has a value ...

, which is an extension of

TeX Tex, TeX, TEX, may refer to: People and fictional characters * Tex (nickname), a list of people and fictional characters with the nickname * Tex Earnhardt (1930–2020), U.S. businessman * Joe Tex (1933–1982), stage name of American soul singer ...

. 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 The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

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 (, also referred to as UHH) is a public university, public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('':de:Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen, ...

Unicode coverage

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 The Latin-1 Supplement (also called C1 Controls and Latin-1 Supplement) is the second Unicode block in the Unicode standard. It encodes the upper range of ISO 8859-1: 80 (U+0080) – FF (U+00FF). C1 Controls (0080–009F) are not graphic. T ...

Latin Extended-B Latin Extended-B is the fourth block (0180-024F) of the Unicode Standard. It has been included since version 1.0, where it was only allocated to the code points 0180-01FF and contained 113 characters. During unification with ISO 10646 for version ...

* International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) Extensions *

Spacing Modifier Letters Spacing Modifier Letters is a Unicode block containing characters for the IPA, UPA, and other phonetic transcriptions. Included are the IPA tone marks, and modifiers for aspiration and palatalization. The word ''spacing'' indicates that these ...

Combining Diacritical Marks Combining Diacritical Marks is a Unicode block containing the most common combining characters. It also contains the character " Combining Grapheme Joiner", which prevents canonical reordering of combining characters, and despite the name, actua ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

* Cyrillic Supplement *

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

N'Ko NKo (ߒߞߏ), also spelled N'Ko, is an alphabetic script devised by Solomana Kante, Solomana Kanté in 1949, as a modern writing system for the Manding languages of West Africa. The term ''NKo'', which means ''I say'' in all Manding languages, i ...

Thaana Thaana, Tãna, Taana or Tāna ( ) is the present writing system of the Maldivian language spoken in the Maldives. Thaana has characteristics of both an abugida (diacritics, vowel-killer strokes) and a true alphabet (all vowels are w ...

* Syriac *

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian diaspora, Armenian communities around the ...

* Georgian *

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...

* Bengali * Gujarati *

Gurmukhi Gurmukhī ( , Shahmukhi: ) is an abugida developed from the Laṇḍā scripts, standardized and used by the second Sikh guru, Guru Angad (1504–1552). Commonly regarded as a Sikh script, Gurmukhi is used in Punjab, India as the official scrip ...

* Oriya * Sinhala *

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of ...

* Tai Le * Ethiopic * Thai * Kayah Li *

Cherokee The Cherokee (; , or ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern ...

Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics is a Unicode block containing syllabic characters for writing Inuktitut, Carrier, Cree (along with several of its dialect-specific characters), Ojibwe, Blackfoot and Canadian Athabascan languages. Additio ...

* Hanunóo * Buginese * Vai *

Phonetic Extensions Phonetic Extensions is a Unicode block containing phonetic characters used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet, Old Irish phonetic notation, the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' and American dictionaries, and Americanist and Russianist phonetic notat ...

Phonetic Extensions Supplement Phonetic Extensions Supplement is a Unicode block containing characters for specialized and deprecated forms of the International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based ...

*Diacritical marks *

Cyrillic Extended-B Cyrillic Extended-B is a Unicode block containing Cyrillic characters for writing Old Cyrillic and Old Abkhazian, and combining numeric signs for Cyrillic numerals used in early Slavic or Church Slavonic Church Slavonic is the conservative ...

Tifinagh Tifinagh ( Tuareg Berber language: ; Neo-Tifinagh: ; Berber Latin alphabet: ; ) is a script used to write the Berber languages. Tifinagh is descended from the ancient Libyco-Berber alphabet. The traditional Tifinagh, sometimes called Tuareg Tifi ...

Osmanya Osmanya (, ), known in Somali as ''Far Soomaali'' (, "Somali writing") and in Arabic as ''al-kitābah al-ʿuthmānīyah'' (; "Osman writing"), is an alphabetic script created to transcribe the Somali language. It was invented by Osman Yusuf Ke ...

* Coptic *

Glagolitic The Glagolitic script ( , , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed that it was created in the 9th century for the purpose of translating liturgical texts into Old Church Slavonic by Saints Cyril and Methodi ...

* Gothic *

Ugaritic Ugaritic () is an extinct Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeology, archaeologists in 1928 at Ugarit, including several major literary texts, notably the Baal cycl ...

Old Persian Old Persian is one of two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of the Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native speakers as (I ...

* Phoenician *

Runic Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets, known as runic rows, runic alphabets or futharks (also, see '' futhark'' vs ''runic alphabet''), native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were primarily used to represent a sound value (a ...

Braille Braille ( , ) is a Tactile alphabet, tactile writing system used by blindness, blind or visually impaired people. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille displays that connect to computers and smartphone device ...

Supplemental Arrows-A Supplemental Arrows-A is a Unicode block containing various arrow symbols. Block History The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Supplemental Arrows-A block: See also ...

Latin Extended Additional Latin Extended Additional is a Unicode block. The characters in this block are mostly precomposed combinations of Latin letters with one or more general diacritical marks. Ninety of the characters are used in the Vietnamese alphabet The Vie ...

* Greek Extended *

General Punctuation General Punctuation is a Unicode block containing punctuation, spacing, and formatting characters for use with all scripts and writing systems. Included are the defined-width spaces, joining formats, directional formats, smart quotes, archaic ...

* Super and Sub scripts * Currency Symbols *

Letterlike Symbols Letterlike Symbols is a Unicode block containing 80 characters which are constructed mainly from the glyphs of one or more letters. In addition to this block, Unicode includes full styled mathematical alphabets, although Unicode does not exp ...

Number Forms Number Forms is a Unicode block containing Unicode compatibility characters that have specific meaning as numbers, but are constructed from other characters. They consist primarily of vulgar fractions and Roman numerals. In addition to the ch ...

* Arrows *

Mathematical Operators Mathematical Operators is a Unicode block containing characters for mathematical, logical, and set notation. Notably absent are the plus sign (+), greater than sign (>) and less than sign (<), due to them already appearing in the Basic ...

* Miscellaneous Technical Symbols *

Enclosed Alphanumerics Enclosed Alphanumerics is a Unicode block of Typography, typographical symbols of an alphanumeric within a circle, a bracket or other not-closed enclosure, or ending in a full stop. It is currently fully allocated. Within the Basic Multi ...

Box Drawing Box Drawing is a Unicode block containing characters for compatibility with legacy graphics standards that contained characters for making bordered charts and tables, i.e. box-drawing characters. Its block name in Unicode 1.0 was Form and Chart C ...

Block Elements Block Elements is a Unicode block containing square block symbols of various fill and shading. Used along with block elements are box-drawing characters, shade characters, and terminal graphic characters. These can be used for filling regions of t ...

Geometric Shapes A shape is a graphics, graphical representation of an object's form or its external boundary, outline, or external Surface (mathematics), surface. It is distinct from other object properties, such as color, Surface texture, texture, or material ...

Miscellaneous Symbols Miscellaneous Symbols is a Unicode block (U+2600–U+26FF) containing glyphs representing concepts from a variety of categories: astrological, astronomical, chess, dice, musical notation, political symbols, recycling, religious symbols, trig ...

* Dingbats *

Alphabetic Presentation Forms Alphabetic Presentation Forms is a Unicode block containing standard ligatures for the Latin, Armenian, and Hebrew scripts. Block History The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in ...

*Vietnamese * Western music * Byzantine music * Mah Jong tiles *

Dominoes Dominoes is a family of tile-based games played with gaming pieces. Each domino is a rectangular tile, usually with a line dividing its face into two square ''ends''. Each end is marked with a number of spots (also called ''Pip (counting), pips ...

References

External links

GNU FreeFontFree UCS Outline Fonts Project
{{GNU Free software Unicode typefaces FreeFont Computer-related introductions in 2002