Nimbus Sans is a
sans-serif typeface
A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.
There are thousands o ...
created by
URW++, based on
Helvetica
Helvetica (originally 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 famous 19th century (1890s) ...
.
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
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...
and
AFPL in Type 1 format in 1996 and
LPPL in 2009, and is one of several freely licensed fonts offered by
URW++.
Although the characters are not exactly the same, Nimbus Sans L has metrics almost identical to Helvetica and
Arial
Arial (also called Arial MT) is a sans-serif typeface and set of computer fonts in the neo-grotesque style. Fonts from the Arial family are included with all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 3.1 on, some other Microsoft software ap ...
. 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 or rendering of such page description language file ...
fonts, a set of free alternatives to the 35
basic PostScript fonts (which include Helvetica).
It is a standard typeface in many
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...
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.
Nimbus Sans Novus
It is a version Linotype's Stempel Studio source, based on Neue Helvetica, but without the extended fonts.
The font names ending with (D) have tighter letter spacing.
See also
*
Nimbus Roman No9 L
Nimbus Roman is a serif typeface created by URW Studio in 1982.
Nimbus Roman No. 9 L is a serif typeface created by URW Studio in 1987, and eventually released under the GPL and AFPL (as Type 1 font for Ghostscript) in 1996 and LPPL i ...
*
Nimbus Mono L
Nimbus Mono is a monospaced typeface created by URW Studio in 1984, and eventually released under the GPL and AFPL (as Type 1 font for Ghostscript) in 1996 and LPPL in 2009. In 2017, the font, alongside other Core 35 fonts, has been additionall ...
*
Free software Unicode typefaces
There are Unicode typefaces which are open-source and designed to contain glyphs of all Unicode characters, or at least a broad selection of Unicode scripts. There are also numerous projects aimed at providing only a certain script, such as the ...
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