GNU FreeFont

FreeSerif
Category	Serif
Classification	Transitional
Designer(s)	Primož Peterlin, Steve White
Characters	8,087
Glyphs	10,537
License	GPL-3.0-or-later with Font-exception-2.0

FreeSans
Category	Sans-serif
Classification	Neo-grotesque
Designer(s)	Primož Peterlin, Steve White
Characters	4,622
Glyphs	6,272
License	GPL-3.0-or-later with Font-exception-2.0

FreeMono
Category	Monospace
Classification	Mechanistic
Designer(s)	Primož Peterlin, Steve White
Foundry	GNU Savannah
Date created	19 February 2002
Date released	7 April 2005
Characters	4,160
Glyphs	4,178
License	GPL-3.0-or-later with Font-exception-2.0
Website	www.gnu.org/software/freefont/
Latest release version	20120503
Latest release date	3 May 2012

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 (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.^[2] They are also packaged on certain Linux distributions, including Ubuntu^[3] and Arch Linux.^[4]

Design

The glyphs of GNU FreeFont come from many sources, all of which are compatible with the GPL.^[5]

The core Latin characters are derived from the Type 1 fonts donated by URW++ to the Ghostscript project.^[6] Specifically, the design notes of GNU FreeFont state that:^[7]

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

The Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian, Hebrew, Arabic, and International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) characters are partially based on Omega, which is an extension of TeX.^[8] 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 glyphs.

The Devanagari range in serif is from the Velthuis TeX font,^[9] while the range in sans is based on Gargi;^[10] Bengali and Gurmukhi ranges are based on Harsh Kumar's BharatBhasha project^[11] 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.^[12]

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 blocks: ^[13]