Liberation fonts

Liberation is a free font package, which on behalf of Red Hat Ascender Corp.. is developed. Basic intention is metric identity with the most widely used Microsoft proprietary fonts Arial, Times New Roman and Courier New, which is why Liberation is a font family only in the broadest sense. The first publication was made on 9 May 2007 under a modified GNU General Public License 2 As of version 2.0, which was released on 18 June 2012, are the Liberation fonts under the SIL Open Font License.

Typeface

Liberation offers three font families: Sans, Serif and Mono. The former has metric identity to Arial, Times New Roman to the second and the third to Courier New. Each font family is in the four sections of " normal", " bold ", " italic " and " bold italic " before. As the names imply, it is in a serif Antiqua, in a sans serif and mono to a non -proportional font.

All of Liberation fonts are available in TrueType format so than ordinary. Ttf files. For users of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora it is also available as an RPM package.

Metric identity

The metric identity with the Microsoft fonts does not mean that they are optically indistinguishable from these, only the height and width of each glyph is consistent with the Microsoft counterparts agree. This means that a text, for which, for example, the Liberation Sans is used, the exact same line and has page breaks, as the Arial font would have been used.

Differences between Liberation fonts and Microsoft counterparts

Liberation Sans - Arial

In addition to different line ends and the distinctly different basic shape of the lowercase "a " particularly striking that the Liberation Sans thinner overflows to rounding has in the trunk. Despite having the same stem width thus has a set in the Liberation Sans text a slightly lighter shade of gray value than the Arial. In addition, the oval shapes of Liberation Sans are a bit " square " than the rounder the Arial.

Liberation Serif - Times New Roman

Liberation Serif and Times New Roman come from different families. The Liberation Serif is characterized primarily by straighter forms, while in the Times New Roman letters clearly " curved " look. In particular, the small "e" this difference in reading is clearly visible.

Liberation Mono - Courier New

Here are two completely different and therefore hardly comparable families. The Liberation Mono was not designed with the intention to form a counterpart to the thin line "typewriter font " Courier New. Rather, it is clearly visible from the Sans - section derived, where the narrow letters such as t or i " normal" in the set width of the wide glyphs were adjusted to achieve a uniform typeface.

History

The Microsoft fonts are indeed widespread, but are under a proprietary license, which means that they may not be distributed and used freely. They may for example not be shipped with Linux -based systems.

However, some widely used Microsoft fonts can be installed later as Microsoft Core Fonts on Linux systems.

As another typeface requires at least a psychological familiarization process, Mark Webbink attacked this problem in an article in Linux Magazine in early 2007, and proposed to develop fonts which possess metric identity with the Microsoft fonts, however, they provide under a free license.

As a result, commissioned Red Hat commercial font developers Ascender Corp.. with the development of an appropriate font family with the right to be allowed to publish it under a free license. The first part of this development was completed in early May 2007 and Liberation Sans, Serif and Mono were released in a first version.

License and alternative

The Liberation fonts have been released under an enhanced version of the GPL 2. The most important extension refers to documents that use this font. These documents must not be released under the GPL 2, but may be released under any license. Other changes relate to the removal of references to Red Hat and the brand "Liberation " in the case of a modification, and other provisions, which, however, are irrelevant for the normal user.

The use of Liberation fonts restricts documents created under licensing law in any way.

The restrictive license provisions have made the expansion and further development of the Liberation of possible prospects unattractive in this episode hardly adds and changes are in 2007, since the introduction of the font been made.

Google acquired Ascender the rights to a remake of the font under the SIL Open Font License and spread the font under the name Chrome OS fonts ( " Croscore " ) Arimo ( sans ), cousin ( monospace ) and Tinos ( serif ). The version 2.0 of the Liberation fonts based on the Croscore fonts. This version already includes a larger font cover, and is now under the SIL Open Font License. The fact that there is just no other fonts under GPL, but very well which is under the SIL Open can expect that Liberation 2.0 is expanded and developed by volunteers.