GNU FreeFont 20120503 released

[Steve White]

We are relieved to announce the 20120503 release of GNU FreeFont,
    http://www.gnu.org/software/freefont/
whose aim to provide a useful set of free outline fonts covering as
much as possible of the Unicode character set.

Find binaries and sources at
        http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/freefont/
The release can also be downloaded from any GNU mirror, and the list
of mirrors is at
    http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html.

There are lots of improvements, thanks to the efforts of many contributors.

Main efforts
============

Latin, Greek, Cyrillic
----------------------
Overall glyph-by-glyph standardization of spacing.
Re-kerned based on the new spacing.

Arabic
------
(Serif regular and bold) all letters re-done, better to resemble
modern type in the Nask style, and better to use positional forms.
Main range and Supplement-B completed, as well as the first section of
Supplement-A (all but ligatures).
Took steps to make the range functional for
    Arabic, Persian (Farsi), Urdu, Pashto, Seraiki, Uighur, and Malay
as well as several African scripts.
(Mono) added basic range and tables.

Cyrillic
--------
Serbian/Macedonian localized forms for de, cursive gje, sha, be, ta,
Bulgarian alternative forms for several letters (serif, as Style Set)
(Sans) letters for Abkhaz and Azerbaijani, and Nivkh.

Devanagari
----------
(Serif and SerifBold) imported outlines from the Velthuis latex font,
to support for Hindi, Marathi, and Sanskrit, including localized
glyphs for Calcutta, Bombay, and Napali.
(Sans) overhauled range, adding some glyphs and rearranging some tables.
(Sans Bold) Made range based on medium weight version.

Gujarati
--------
(Serif) Implemented range using glyphs from Samyak Gujarati font.
Deleted whole range in Sans (needs to start over again anyway).

Oriya
-----
(Serif) Implemented range in Serif using glyphs from Samyak Oriya font.

Malayalaam
----------
(Sans) Replaced range with with Meera 04 font of Swathanthra Malayalam Computing

Gurmukhi
--------
(Serif) Replaced range with glyphs from the Punjabi font by Hardip Singh Pannu

Sinhala
-------
(Serif) made a bold face

Old Italic
----------
(Mono) new letters constructed by S. White

Other additions
===============

IPA
---
Letters for North American languages
        Saanich/Musqueam, Kwak̕wala
Some replacements for d-, l-, t-apostrophe

Runic
-----
(Mono) completely re-did range to fit weight, and to look better.

Syriac
------
Made new Unicode letters like those from Tim Erikson's Carlo Ator

Thaana
------
(SerifBold) derived from medium version

Bengali
-------
Ganda mark

Malayalam
---------
New Unicode characters, corrected some marks in Sans.

Greek
-----
Lunate letters

Latin Extended-A
----------------
Shona letters, other African letters

Latin Extended-D
----------------
H-hook (U+A7AA) for Chadian languages

Combining Diacritical marks
---------------------------
(Mono) Completed range

Currency
--------
(Serif) Indian Rupee courtesy of Daniel Johnson

Specials
--------
Filled out range in all faces

Control Pictures
----------------
Filled out range in regular style of each face

various additions to
--------------------
        Letterlike symbols
        Miscellaneous symbols
        Mathematical Operators
        Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A
        Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-B
        Phonetic Extensions
        Punctuation, new Punctuation Supplemental range
        Geometric Shapes

Typographic
===========

small caps
----------
(Serif,SerifBold,Sans,SansBold)
Replacement glyphs and tables for core Latin letters.
also glyphs for script-size letters.

new substitution look-ups
-------------------------
        * small caps,
        * caps to small caps,
        * old-style figures,
        * proportional numbers,
        * slashed zero,
        * vulgar fractions,
        * superscripts,
        * subscripts

Technical/legal
===============

WOFF (Web Open Font Format) version, as well as directions for constructing
WOFF derivatives.

Hashed out how the license works with Web Fonts technologies.
New file webfont_guidelines.txt contains instructions.

Project version control switched from CVS to SVN.

Re-arranged the tools/ directory;
now package .sfd files in a "*src*" tarball with a top-level Makefile.

Filled in IBM Classifications

Removed angle-brackets from license text that triggered bugs in some software.
Likewise scripts to automatically clean up the SVN version string in fonts.

Cleaned up some incorrect Indic language lookups, that weren't being triggered
correctly due to FontForge bugs.

Added script to generate Arabic test pages, courtesy of Emmanuel Vallois.

Clean-ups
=========
Many validation issues (some due to font changes, some due to FontForge changes)

Adjustments
===========

Latin, Greek, Cyrillic
----------------------
Much fiddling with accents, for various reasons (including bug reports.)
(Sans) acute and grave accent on capitals made to fit in line,
(Serif, Sans) Hungarian umlaut and double-grave relaxed angle a bit.
Regularized bullet-like characters somewhat.

Greek, Serif Cyrillic
----------------------
Made Phi, Ef more distinct
Reduced sizes of hooks on many letters.

Hebrew
------
Adjusted marks, cantillation points; widened Hebrew wide letters more.
Made yod in Yiddish distinct from Hebrew.

Osmanya
-------
Corrected Unicode values.

Malayalam
---------
Rearranged some incorrect lookups.

Tamil
-------
Several tables added to resolve spacing issues.

Super/Sub scripts
-----------------
Regularized positioning--All the "superior" numerals and a few superscript
Latin letters got positioned so they go over the em height.
Latin ordinals are positioned parallel to em height.
Many glyphs made to reference new small caps and script-size glyphs.

Thanks to
=========
Daniel Johnson
Tim Erikson
Emmanuel Vallois (!)
Zdeněk Wagner
Monika Shah
Swathanthra Malayalam Computing (Praveen A., Santhosh Thottingal)
Sarovar.org, who host the Samyak fonts (especially Rahul Bhalerao)
Jason Woolman (of Musqueam First Nation)
Chris Harvey (LanguageGeek)
Timothy Montler
Samyak font admin Rahul Bhalerao
Pavel Skrylev
Karl Berry
Alessandro Ceschini
Tim Erickson
Harshula
Sander van Geloven
Masoud Pourmoosa
Savannah.org maintenance team
And the numerous issue reporters, question-askers, detractors, and users!