Nimbus Sans is a

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif (), gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than ...

typeface A typeface (or font family) is a design of Letter (alphabet), letters, Numerical digit, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, ...

created by

URW++ URW Type Foundry GmbH (formerly URW++ Design & Development GmbH) is a type foundry based in Hamburg, Germany. The foundry has its own library with more than 500 font families. The company specializes in customized corporate typefaces and the dev ...

, based on

Helvetica Helvetica, also known by its original name Neue Haas Grotesk, is a widely-used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the f ...

Nimbus Sans

It is a version using URW++ font source. The family supports Western Europe, East Europe, Turkish, Baltic, and Romanian languages. The font names ending with (D) have slightly lighter font weights and tighter spacing.

Nimbus Sans Poster

It is a version of Nimbus Sans with even tighter spacing than the Nimbus Sans (D) fonts. Other changes include alternate designs for currency symbols.

Nimbus Sans Diagonal

It is a version with more right lean than Nimbus Sans italic fonts. The family currently only includes 1 font, in Black weight in medium width.

Nimbus Sans Mono

It is a monospaced variant of Nimbus Sans. The family currently only includes 1 font, in Regular weight in medium width.

Nimbus Sans Global

It is a family supporting Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, CJK ideographic, Japanese kana, Korean Hangul syllables, Thai characters. The family includes 5 fonts in 1 (medium) width, with 4 proportional and 1 monospaced fonts. The proportional fonts are in 4 weights (bold, medium, regular, light), while the monospace font is in medium weight.

Nimbus Sans L

Nimbus Sans L is a version of Nimbus Sans using Adobe font sources. It was designed in 1987. The family includes 17 fonts in 5 weights and 2 widths, with Nimbus Sans L Extra Black only available in condensed roman format. A subset of Nimbus Sans L, which includes regular and bold weight fonts in all widths and styles, were released under the GPL and

AFPL The Aladdin Free Public License, abbreviated AFPL, is a license written by L. Peter Deutsch for his Ghostscript PostScript language interpreter. History The license was derived from the GNU General Public License, but differs on two key points: ...

in Type 1 format in 1996 and LPPL in 2009, and is one of several freely licensed fonts offered by

. Although the characters are not exactly the same, Nimbus Sans L has metrics almost identical to Helvetica and

Arial Arial is a sans-serif typeface in the Sans-serif#Neo-grotesque, neo-grotesque style. Fonts from the Arial family are included with all versions of Microsoft Windows after Windows 3.1, as well as in other Microsoft programs, Apple's macOS, and ma ...

. Nimbus Sans L is one of the

Ghostscript Ghostscript is a suite of software based on an interpreter for Adobe Systems' PostScript and Portable Document Format (PDF) page description languages. Its main purposes are the rasterization of documents in these language,, the display or prin ...

fonts, a set of free alternatives to the 35 basic PostScript fonts (which include Helvetica). It is a standard typeface in many

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

distributions. It was used as default font in OpenOffice.org Calc and Impress in some Linux distributions (e.g. Ubuntu - up to version 8.10; since Ubuntu 9.04 the default font was changed to Liberation Sans).

Ghostscript version

It was extended to include Cyrillic support by Valek Filippov.

TeX Gyre Heros

The derived TeX Gyre Heros includes support for Greek and as well as support for math.

Nimbus Sans Novus

It is a version using Linotype's Stempel Studio source, based on Neue Helvetica, but without the extended width. Nimbus Sans Novus new

While the design of the characters is based on Neue Helvetica, the two typefaces differ metrically: Nimbus Sans Novus has smaller x-height and is narrower at the same font size (but not at the same x-height). The weight systems of the two typefaces also drastically differ. For instance, the Regular weight of Nimbus Sans Novus resembles the Light weight of Neue Helvetica, while the Medium weight of Nimbus Sans Novus resembles the Regular Neue Helvetica design. Nimbus Sans Novus has a Semibold weight, but Neue Helvetica does not. The font names ending with (D) have tighter letter spacing.

References

External links

Nimbus Sans

*URW pages:
Nimbus Sans Family

Nimbus Sans GlobalNimbus Sans on MyFontsURW fonts sources on Ghostscript
(Type 1, OTF and TTF fonts)

Nimbus Sans L

*URW pages
Nimbus Sans LURW fonts releases
(Type 1)

Nimbus Sans Novus

*URW pages
Nimbus Sans Novus
{{free and open-source typography Neo-grotesque sans-serif typefaces Open-source typefaces Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1999

Nimbus Sans

Nimbus Sans Poster

Nimbus Sans Diagonal

Nimbus Sans Mono

Nimbus Sans Global

Nimbus Sans L

Ghostscript version

TeX Gyre Heros

Nimbus Sans Novus

See also

References

External links

Nimbus Sans

Nimbus Sans L

Nimbus Sans Novus