Greek symbol fonts in latex

Question

I'm an engineering student currently working on the thesis. I'm using the math font package newtxmath, which generates the greek letter \nu as:

while the symbol font I want is:

I have been trying so hard to find a specific math font which may generate the latter symbol, but I couldn't find one yet. It will be much appreciated if anyone can give me an idea on this. Many thanks in advance!

Edit1: The code I used for the former example is:

\documentclass[]{book}
\usepackage{newtxmath}

\begin{document}
$\nu$
\end{document}

Edit2: Thanks for the comments and answers! I'm sorry but I cannot leave comments to each comment and answer due to lack of reputations now. @Ralf Stubner, I just ran pdffonts and the result is attached here (The problem is that I'm not sure which one is the one.. and do we have Times-Roman in latex other than newtxmath & newtxtest? It's curious..):

Edit3: @Cicada, thanks! I think it matches the pdf! Though I have one more thing to ask. I tried your code, but it gave me an error message saying that I need to use LuaTex. Is there any way to get the same result using pdflatex? Thanks in a dvance.

Answer 1

First find the font.

Then, if it is Unicode (U+1D708 is mathematical small nu, i.e. italic), use unicode-math to activate it with setmathfont{}.

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
%\usepackage{amsfonts}
\usepackage{unicode-math}
\setmathfont{STIX Math}
\begin{document}
\Huge
$\nu$
\end{document}

STIX Math is a partial match (for the pointy bit), Latin Modern Math for the angle of the main bar.

=====

It's an italic ordinary nu (U+03BD), in STIX (or XITS).

Italic ordinary lowercase Greek being used for symbols. Does that match your PDF?

MWE

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\pagecolor{red!3}
\usepackage{multicol}
\newcommand\SampleText{\textit{\symbol{"03BD}}}%\symbol{"1D708}}
\newfontfamily\frc{STIX}% Math}
\newfontfamily\fre{XITS}% Math}
\newcommand\printther[2]{{#1\Huge\SampleText} -- #2}
\begin{document}
\begin{multicols}{2}
\printther{\frc}{STIX}

\printther{\fre}{XITS}
\end{multicols}
{\frc \SampleText}
{\fre \SampleText}
\end{document}

=====

My answer is: I recommend using unicode, since that would be the standard nowadays. (How was the source PDF produced, for example - the one with the desired character shape?)

All the rest that follows is more of a minor exploratory footnote than substantive, and not intended as part of my actual answer.

There will be ways to get a character in without using xelatex or lualatex and direct unicode, but I don't know the old-style font encodings. Redefining the \nu macro is another possibility. Or an SE question has answered this already, perhaps. It depends on your context: do you need just one character changed, or a whole font family? And pdflatex only? Sounds like it should be a separate question, to get the best results the quickest.

Expanding on the comments: \usepackage{stix} in pdflatex produces this:

====

Expanding still further, there's a way to access glyphs in old-style fonts (probably multiple ways actually, I would expect).

For pdflatex, there is an italic nu sitting in position x17 in the stix-mathit tfm font metric file, and a more cursive one in the same position in the stix2-mathit tfm.

To use them in math mode, use the \text command from the amsmath package.

You can adjust the size manually.

MWE

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\font\myfont = "stix-mathit" at 36pt
\font\myfontb = "stix2-mathit" at 36pt
\font\myfontc = "stix-mathit" at 12pt
\newcommand\mynu{\text{\myfontc\char"17}}
\begin{document}
\myfont\char"17
\myfontb\char"17

$\text{\myfontc\char"17} = f^{2}$

$\mynu = f^{2}$

\end{document}

Alternatively, no packages at all gives this:

MWE

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\Huge $\nu$
\end{document}

I still recommend unicode, though.

Answer 2

The newtxmath package includes several options for changing the math font, e.g., to use the STIX2 fonts, libertine fonts, garamondx fonts, etc. without giving up the many other nice features of the newtx bundle. There is also an option varvw (and varg) that will load versions of v and w (and also y and g) that are more distinctive, so as to avoid confusion with nu, e.g.

This example isn't a match to your requested glyph, but it may give a sense of the possibilities without having to change your font set.

\documentclass[]{book}

\usepackage{newtxtext}
\usepackage[varg,stix2]{newtxmath}
%\usepackage[varg]{newtxmath}
%\usepackage[varg,libertine]{newtxmath}

\begin{document}
\[ 
\nu \textrm { is not } v \qquad \int_0^\delta \nu \frac{\partial^2 v}{\partial y^2}\, dy
\]

\end{document}

newtx with varg:

newtx with varg and stix2:

newtx with varg and libertine:

EDIT -- Cicada has made the good suggestion to try the newtx option for charter fonts in math. Using the package call

\usepackage[varg,charter]{newtxmath}

the previous example becomes

which produces a \nu that is closer to the OP's requested glyph.