MS Sans Serif
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
MS Sans Serif is a proportional raster font introduced in Windows 1.x as "Helv". It changed to its current name starting with Windows 3.1. It is the default system font on Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98, Windows 98SE, and Windows ME. Starting from Windows 2000, the default desktop scheme uses Tahoma (MS Sans Serif is still used on some dialog boxes). MS Sans Serif was available in the font sizes 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, and 24. When changing dpi settings in Windows 95 or later (in Windows 3.1, dpi setting is tied to screen resolution, depending on driver information file), Windows is configured to load a different MS Sans Serif font, historically called the "8514" variant.
Today, the font is still available in Windows XP, and is still used in menus, dialog boxes, etc. The name "Helv" is still used in Windows as a synonym for MS Sans Serif.
Contents |
[edit] Microsoft Sans Serif
Microsoft Sans Serif is a TrueType font that is designed as a vectorized, metric-compatible variant of MS Sans Serif, first distributed with Windows 2000 and later. This font also contains most glyphs shipped with any version of Windows until Windows Vista, excluding fonts supporting East Asian ideographs.
Despite being a vectorized replacement, there are subtle design changes. For example, the tail in lowercase a is shortened to vertical stem in Microsoft Sans Serif, the top of the stem lowercase f curves down instead of horizontally, the hook at the decenders of y and j are hooked up in Microsoft Sans Serif, the strokes in the middle of number 8 intersect at a different angle.
Version 1.10 of the font includes 1119 glyphs (1209 characters, 26 blocks), supporting Unicode ranges Alphabetic Presentation forms, Arabic, Arabic Presentation forms A-B, Cyrillic, General Punctuation, Greek and Coptic, Hebrew, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, Latin Extended Additional, Mathematical Operators, Thai. Supported code pages include 1250-1258, Macintosh US Roman, 874, 864, 862, 708. Font is smoothed at 0-6 points, hinted at 7-14 points, hinted and smoothed at 15 and above points. OpenType features includes init, isol, medi, fina, liga for default Arabic script.
Version 1.41 includes 2257 glyphs (2301 characters, 28 blocks), which extended Unicode ranges to include Combining Diacritical Marks, Currency Symbols, Cyrillic Supplement, Geometric Shapes, Greek Extended, IPA Extensions, Number Forms, Spacing Modifier Letters. New OpenType scripts include Arabic MAR script. Additional OpenType features includes rlig for Arabic scripts.
Version 5.00 includes 3053 glyphs (2788 characters, 36 blocks), which extended Unicode ranges to include Arabic Supplement, Combining Diacritical Marks Supplement, Combining Half Marks, Latin Extended-C, Latin Extended-D, Phonetic Extensions, Phonetic Extensions Supplement, Specials, Superscripts and Subscripts. New OpenType scripts include Arabic URD (Urdu), Cyrillic (default), Hebrew (default), Latin (default, Romanian), Thai (default). Additional OpenType features includes ccmp, mark, mkmk for Arabic scripts; locl for Arabic URD (Urdu) script; mark, mkmk for default Cyrillic; dlig, ccmp, mark for default Hebrew; ccmp, mark, mkmk for Latin scripts; locl for Romanian Latin; ccmp, mark, mkmk for Thai.
The Latin Microsoft Sans Serif glyphs are also used in following fonts: Kartika, Mangal, Vrinda.
[edit] Non-Microsoft operating systems
On October 16, 2007, Apple announced on their website that the next version of their flagship operating system, Mac OS X v10.5 ("Leopard"), would be bundled with Microsoft Sans Serif. Interestingly, Leopard also ships with several other previously Microsoft-only fonts, including Tahoma, Arial Unicode, and Wingdings.
OS/2 and its variant eComStation still name the font 'Helv'
Retail versions of the font is sold through Ascender Corporation.
[edit] Font preview
- Technical note: These previews will display correctly only in operating systems containing these fonts; otherwise the font used is likely the browser's default text font.
[edit] MS Sans Serif
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890
[edit] Microsoft Sans Serif
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890
[edit] External links
 |
This Microsoft Windows article is a stub. You can help by expanding it. |
