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I am looking for a free font that has similar fat numerals as those used for indicating the time signature in (Western) sheet music. For sure, specific sheet music fonts do exist, but these typically do not offer the possibility to use the numerals separately.

Here are some specimen of what I am looking for:

34 32 23468 98 128

Notice how the 4 is fat; not only at the vertical stem but also on the slope. A font like Georgia does not exhibit that dual fatiness on the 4. Pettingill CF comes in the neighbourhood, but there is still much room for a far better match. The Font Squirrel Font Identifier came up with Country Western Black, based on the 3 and 4. That non-free font also has some resemblance; especially for the 7.

Speaking of which, here are the very rare 5 and 7:

13456 78

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I suggest using Bravura.

You can read a bit about it here: http://www.smufl.org/fonts/.

It can be downloaded here: https://github.com/steinbergmedia/bravura.

About the licensing:

The Bravura font family is made available under the SIL Open Font License, which means that the fonts are free to download, use, embed, redistribute with other software (including commercial software) or to create derivative versions. The only restrictions on its use are that they cannot be sold on their own, any derivative versions cannot use the reserved font name “Bravura”, and any derivative versions must likewise also be licensed under the SIL Open Font License.

It has those fat numerals you are looking for:

(I do not know if it will work in Inkscape, but if it doesn't perhaps you can live with having the numerals as plain vector graphics? Just export a PDF with the numerals from some other program and import it into Inkscape to grab the shapes.)

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  • The Bravura font does work flawlessly out of the box as an OTF in Inkscape on Ubuntu Linux. Thanks!
    – Serge Stroobandt
    Apr 4, 2021 at 12:26
  • The font even features half width, but still fat versions of these numerals. Very nice!
    – Serge Stroobandt
    Apr 4, 2021 at 16:25
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    Yeah, I noticed that. It seems to be a pretty good free font. Btw: I found the font because I remembered once trying MuseScore which is free, and figured that the fonts included must also be free.
    – Wolff
    Apr 4, 2021 at 21:48
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Would you be ok with Fughetta?

https://www.wfonts.com/font/fughetta

Legal info seems to be here: http://slipsong.com/aboutfonts.html

enter image description here

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  • Unfortunately, this font as well as the Maestro font found on said site appear to be unusable with Inkscape (and GIMP). The special glyphs do not appear. These do appear in LibreOffice Writer, though. How can I use these fonts with Inkscape?
    – Serge Stroobandt
    Apr 4, 2021 at 6:52
  • @SergeStroobandt Now you have a totally new question. There can be people who could see it interesting but have already skipped this case because they do not bother search fonts for others. BTW many fonts are freely downloadable but not at all free to be used. Others are free only for personal projects, but distributing the printed results or computer images or embedding the font into an application or website isn't free. The author has a right to allow and deny what we wants. Has he power to take his money is a different thing if the thief lives in the middle of Sahara.
    – user82991
    Apr 4, 2021 at 9:28
  • @user287001 There are many reasons for wanting to use only free fonts. In this particular case, it is for an artwork that is going to be donated to a good cause and I do not want the recipient to run into legal trouble.
    – Serge Stroobandt
    Apr 4, 2021 at 12:30
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    OK, But your acute problem seems to be 100% solved by user Wolff. The partially functional font is still an interesting case.
    – user82991
    Apr 4, 2021 at 14:14
  • @user287001 Yes, it would be interesting to know what is wrong with those fonts.
    – Serge Stroobandt
    Apr 4, 2021 at 16:22

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