Comment 15 for bug 609289

@Mark: The Greek lowercase nu (U+03BD) is the only upright, non-bold lowercase nu. (That is, there are not separate nu glyphs for math and text in this particular instance.) There are special bold, italic, and bold-italic nu glyphs for math, however. So then the question becomes, are upright, non-bold lowercase nu glyphs used in typesetting mathematics?

The short answer to that question is: there is is no short answer. Traditionally, TeX uses italic lowercase Greek letters and upright uppercase Greek letters for variables. In contrast, the ISO standards mandate the use of italic forms for both upper- and lowercase. (Furthermore, the French often use upright uppercase Latin letters as well as upright Greek.)

In any case, it's conceivable that a mathematician may have need to use both Latin lowercase v and Greek lowercase nu in the same formula. A few such occasions are shown here: <http://www.latexsearch.com/latexFacets.do?searchInput=\nu%20v&stype=exact>

@Nick: Mathematicians do often avoid using nu and v in the same equation because they're easily confused at first glance. If we're willing to say that this font should not be used for mathematics, that's fine. But if we do want to allow for this font to be used for mathematics, we need to adjust the nu glyph.

Additionally, the italic v and italic nu look the same, too.