H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Sep 27, 2008 06:19 AM UTC:
'Tascbase (now discontinued) had a TrueType chess figurine font for diagrams, which is freeware I'm sure'
Yes, but it seems to contain only symbols for orthodox Chess pieces. There are many freely available fonts that do that, (e.g. see http://www.enpassant.dk/chess/fonteng.htm ), but virtually none those support fairy pieces. And the few that do usually support them as rotated ordinary symbols (upside-down Queen for Grasshopper etc.), which I positively hate.
There is George Tsavdaris' WinboardF font, but it is far more limited than Alfaerie. And there is the Superchess font that supports the orthodox plus 9 non-orthodox Chess pieces, but it has a licene agreement that allows it only to be used for Superchess. So besides the fact that it is even more limited than the WinboardF font, it cannot b distributed with WinBoard.