Nimbus Sans

This version uses URW++ font source and historically has three optical sizes, labelled T (Text), D (Display), and P (Poster),^[1] although the P version is generally no longer available.^[2][3] Some fonts in the family support Western Europe, East Europe, Turkish, Baltic, and Romanian languages.

As the labels suggest, Nimbus Sans D and P are created for larger texts, thus have lighter font weights and tighter spacing. The two optical sizes have similar designs, with Nimbus Sans P being even tighter. Nimbus Sans P includes alternate designs for currency symbols.^{[citation needed]}

Florian Hardwig has described the display-oriented styles of Nimbus Sans P, with tight spacing, as more reminiscent of Helvetica as used in the 1970s from cold type than the early official Helvetica digitisations.^[4]

Created in 1987, Nimbus Sans L is a version of Nimbus Sans using Adobe font sources. The typeface was shipped with Apple's LaserWriter II, hence the "L" label.^[1] 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 made open source. The font family was released under the GPL and AFPL in Type 1 format in 1996^{[11][12][13][14][15][16]} and LPPL in 2009,^[17] making it one of several freely licensed fonts offered by URW++. Nimbus Sans L is part of the Ghostscript free font collection, a set of free alternatives to the 35 basic PostScript fonts (which include Helvetica).^{[18][19][20][21]} The Ghostscript version was updated as recently as in 2020. ^[22]

Nimbus Sans L has metrics similar to Helvetica and Arial, and is a standard typeface in many Linux distributions and open-source applications.^[23][24][25] For example, it was used as default font in OpenOffice.org Calc and Impress,^{[citation needed]} but its successor LibreOffice used Liberation Sans as the default sans-serif font. However, its popularity also leads to confusion, since it is often simply called Nimbus Sans in the open-source sphere, without the "L" label.^[26][27]

Most versions of Nimbus Sans L support Greek and Cyrillic characters.^[28]

Nimbus Sans Novus is a variant published by URW++ using Linotype's Stempel Studio source, based on Neue Helvetica,^[33] but without the extended width. Some digital releases have support for Greek and Cyrillic characters,^[34] some do not.^[35][36]

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.

• Nimbus Roman No9 L
• Nimbus Mono L
• Free software Unicode typefaces