5 ms·

I have yet to see an open source font that comes even close to a professional font like Helvetica.

• anoncake 8y ago
  What's wrong with Nimbus Sans?
  • mark-r 8y ago
    Nimbus Sans was designed to be a complete lookalike for Helvetica. I'm not sure how they got away with it, except that the IP laws protecting fonts are rather weak. Besides, I don't think it's open source.
    • anoncake 8y ago
      Nimbus Sans is not a lookalike for Helvetica, it is a Helvetica. The visual appearance of fonts is not copyrightable. And it's GPL'd.
      • Mirioron 8y ago
        What does it mean for a font to be GPL? Does it carry the license along into any project you use that font in?
        • mark-r 8y ago
          The GPL version was produced to be included with Ghostscript, which itself is GPL, so that wasn't an issue. I'd be very wary of using it with any other project.
          • anoncake 8y ago
            That sounds like FUD.
• luminarious 8y ago
  Inter UI is quite impressive as far as usability goes: https://rsms.me/inter/ https://rsms.me/inter/
• billfruit 8y ago
  I thought DejaVu Sans was pretty descent, especially as a terminal font.
• amyjess 8y ago
  Noto. It feels like having access to an entire professional foundry as a FOSS download. Though the sans is humanist and not neo-grotesk like Helvetica. Hell, Noto Sans is available in more weights than Helvetica Neue LT Pro. I've actually found myself wishing that Helvetica Neue LT Pro had a real demi instead of jumping from medium to bold. Noto solves that problem.
• floatboth 8y ago
  Fira Sans, PT Sans/Serif, Roboto, Noto, Source Sans/Code Pro, Cantarell...
• jjeaff 8y ago
  Roboto is free, and very very close to Helvetica. http://theunderstatement.com/post/11645166791/roboto-vs-helvetica http://theunderstatement.com/post/11645166791/roboto-vs-helv...