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Bitstream/Gnome Release Vera Font Family

Posted by michael on from the grand-unified-font-solution-still-elusive dept.

bluephone writes "Gnome and Bitstream have released the final version of the Vera font family. Go get it, install them, and enjoy! They work for Windows and Mac users too!" Our earlier story.

73 of 359 comments (clear)

  1. word by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm using them right now, and they're simply beautiful. I suggest someone mirrors them before the site is slashdotted...

    1. Re:word by spongman · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I don't know. I'm not too impressed.

      Here's a comparison of Vera Serif/Sans with Times/Verdana on Windows XP with ClearType at 8 & 12 points (96 dpi): vera.gif.

      A few things stand out:

      • vera serif is much bigger than times. it's a bit taller, but it's a whole lot wider.
      • the kerning (spacing between letters) is bad on the vera fonts. for example, check serif's 'az', 'he', 'um', and sans' 'ox', 'og', 'RO'.
      • the kerning is inconsistent between font sizes, too. check sans' 'WN'. in the small size they're crammed up against each other and in the larger size they're miles apart.
      • in the large serif, what happened to the space between 'FOX' and 'JUMPS'?
  2. I'm obviously retarded by AssFace · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I followed the links in the article and glanced over it and even searched on Bitstream's own site using their font finder...

    I just want to see what the fonts look like without having to install/download the actual files.

    I'm sure that it would be far too silly for them to have all of this talk and not have a link that shows what they look like - so I'm obviously retarded for not finding said link.

    Anyone want to help a special needs kid and give me a link to what the font looks like?

    --

    There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
    1. Re:I'm obviously retarded by Ponty · · Score: 2, Informative

      They're a Verdana clone. Which is too bad, bacause Verdana just isn't as good a font as it could be.

      It's a great move and a nice thing, but it's not the panacea of fonts (like Helvetica is.)

    2. Re:I'm obviously retarded by AssFace · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yes, but neither can match the beauty of Wingdings.

      I use that badboy for everything.

      --

      There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
    3. Re:I'm obviously retarded by ebingo · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yeah you're retarded :)
      Here's a link.

    4. Re:I'm obviously retarded by 13Echo · · Score: 5, Informative

      It isn't a Verdana clone. There are a total of 10 fonts making for four sets. There are different types; serif, sans, and mono. Some look like a Times set. Some look like an Arial set. Some look similar to Verdana.

    5. Re:I'm obviously retarded by insin · · Score: 5, Informative

      I've made it my default font in Phoenix and it's a lot smoother than Verdana. I find it to be much easier on the eye and more pleasant to read.

      Here's a comparison (Verdana above, Vera below):
      Verdana and Vera

    6. Re:I'm obviously retarded by Ponty · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It is better than Verdana, but I find them both to be quite difficult to read. I can't fathom tolerating the amount of time I spend reading a browser every day if I had to use either of those.

      My preferred font is Lucida Grande, followed closely by Helvetica.

    7. Re:I'm obviously retarded by Ponty · · Score: 2, Informative

      The serif faces aren't all that much like Times, really. The roman one is reminiscent of a looser Century Schoolbook, while the bold actually reminds me of Bodoni. It's a nice font, just not that compelling.

      The mono face is the most interesting. It reminds me of an interesting fusion of Monaco and Andale Mono. It does the job well, and I might try using it for something where I need a monospaced font.

      The rest really aren't all that special.

    8. Re:I'm obviously retarded by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Wow. I couldn't stand to read that. Way too blurry. Did you have anti-aliasing on, or is that the actual font?

    9. Re:I'm obviously retarded by repetty · · Score: 2, Informative

      "I've made it my default font in Phoenix and it's a lot smoother than Verdana. I find it to be much easier on the eye and more pleasant to read."

      You realize that what your are mostly comparing is aliased versus anti-aliased font rendering, don't you? :)

    10. Re:I'm obviously retarded by antiMStroll · · Score: 2, Informative

      I was able to achieve the same result on my notebook by playing with the sub-pixel rendering options in X. Nothing scientific, just go through the options one at a time looking for the best result.

    11. Re:I'm obviously retarded by FunkyChild · · Score: 2, Informative

      Verdana's a very good font - for it's purpose. It was designed by Matthew Carter specifically for use on screen - the emphasis is on function, not form. Have a look at these articles that explain some of the rationale behind the design:

      http://www.will-harris.com/verdana-georgia.htm
      http://www.microsoft.com/typography/web/fonts/verd ana/default.htm

      There's no 'panacea of fonts'. Any typographer knows that different typefaces are appropriate in different situations.

  3. heres some images of vera by hfastedge · · Score: 4, Informative

    I did a little googlage:

    http://www.bitstream.com/categories/products/fon ts /vera/

    --

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    Help my mini cause: My journal

    1. Re:heres some images of vera by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      And clickable. You know, it's not _that_ hard, and it helps a lot - particularly with these long links that introduce spaces in plain text...

  4. Re:Windows port? by dorward · · Score: 4, Informative

    So will these fonts become available for Windows?

    Now. Download, extract the tarball, drop the ttfs into your fonts directory.

  5. This is good news... by gillbates · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Considering that one of Linux/Gnome/KDE's weakest points has been its poor support for fonts.

    Quite frankly, I'm glad to see this. The early fonts that came with X were simply horrible when compared to what MS was offering at the time. With better looking fonts, we are one step closer to widespread adoption of Linux on the desktop.

    --
    The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
    1. Re:This is good news... by OpCode42 · · Score: 2, Funny

      They are all small steps until I can buy any game at EB and play it on Linux

      Yeah, that does suck. I mean, I bought Vice City last week, and they said I actually had to own a playstation2 to play it!

    2. Re:This is good news... by zmotula · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Still the sad thing about fonts in X is the poor rendering (even with antialiasing turned on) compared to Windows or MacOS X. Without antialias, cursive fonts are nearly unusable (at least on all the machines I work with). With antialias, the characters have got uneven brightness and fuzzy edges; horizontal lines are too thick (antialiased Mozilla being a perfect example)... Paint to look at.

  6. Here's slashdot in Bitstream Vera Serif by Maxlor · · Score: 4, Informative

    click here

    1. Re:Here's slashdot in Bitstream Vera Serif by Maxlor · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's opera 6.12 on FreeBSD 5.0, XFree 4.3 with fontconfig 2.1.92 and Xft 2.1

      I use Bitstream Vera Serif 10pt as standard serif font, and the minimum font size is set to 8 points.

  7. Re:Work on Windows? by DrXym · · Score: 2, Informative

    LOL, I solved my own problem. Cygwin's "tar jxf" command helpfully extracted the files without giving me permission to read them afterwards :)

  8. copyright, etc by ergonal · · Score: 5, Interesting

    To me, a lot of fonts are pretty similar to each other (in the various "genres" of fonts, anyway).. Does anyone know HOW much they have to differ to avoid copyright issues, etc? It would appear to be a very fine line.

    1. Re:copyright, etc by protoshoggoth · · Score: 2, Informative
      In the US, it is not possible to copyright a 'font' itself--that is to say, the actual images of the letters. What is copyrighted and licensed is the software to display/hint the font. So all the usual tests for 'is this the same software' apply.

      As for outside of the US, where the fonts themselves are copyrightable...well, I'm sure there are legal standards, and I'd imagine they're rather arbitrary. How could they not be? You're right, so many fonts look so similar. Quick--is it Univers or Albertus Medium??? I'm sure some people can tell, but I'd be hard-pressed to do so.

    2. Re:copyright, etc by sh4de · · Score: 4, Informative

      Copyright laws are strange in this respect. You can't copyright the look of your font, just its name. More information here.

      Type foundries have (ab)used this oversight for decades, producing clones of other foundries' popular fonts, with different names.

      That's why there's Swiss from Bitstream and Arial from Monotype, both Linotype Helvetica clones, Book Antiqua from Monotype, a Linotype Palatino clone, and hundreds of others.

    3. Re:copyright, etc by mdemeny · · Score: 2, Informative
      I recall that in old versions of CorelDraw, they had thousands of fonts which were nearly indentical to known fonts, exploiting the fact that you can't copyright letterforms.

      Ottawa was Optima, Erie was Eras, Switzerland was Helvetica, etc...

      Here's a handy-dandy lookup guide.

    4. Re:copyright, etc by liquidsin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      And now for some good, typical Slashdot fun, this site seems to think it was Microsoft who stole helvetica and made arial. There are some slight differences, as are outlined here.

      --
      do not read this line twice.
    5. Re:copyright, etc by MarsCtrl · · Score: 2, Interesting
      That's why there's Swiss [myfonts.com] from Bitstream and Arial [myfonts.com] from Monotype, both Linotype Helvetica [myfonts.com] clones, Book Antiqua [myfonts.com] from Monotype, a Linotype Palatino [myfonts.com] clone, and hundreds of others.


      IIRC, this was the motivation behind the naming of Apple's fonts. Rather than paying royalties to Linotype for their fonts, Apple created their own, and mimiced the names. Thus, Geneva from Helvetica, New York from Times, etc.
      --

      I was going to put a sig here, but I had already submitted the message.
    6. Re:copyright, etc by 1u3hr · · Score: 2, Informative
      IIRC, this was the motivation behind the naming of Apple's fonts. Rather than paying royalties to Linotype for their fonts, Apple created their own, and mimiced the names. Thus, Geneva from Helvetica, New York from Times, etc.

      No, the Mac "city" fonts were all bitmap screen fonts. There were no screen vector fonts for the desktop -- this was before Truetype or ATM . When Adobe brought out ATM it was usually bundled with Adobe versions of Helvetica, Times, etc.

      Later Truetype versions of the city fonts, Chicago in particular, were made, as people had a sentimental attachment to them. Also, Truetype screen fonts are often basically bundles of bitmaps for common sizes, and look crappy at non-standard sizes.

      -- It took me a while to get how you derive "New York" from "Times"; then I remembered the NYT. Of course, the original "Times" font was designed for The Times of London.

    7. Re:copyright, etc by 1u3hr · · Score: 2, Informative
      My understanding is that there was (is?) a concern that books printed with a particular font could be considered a derivative work (of that font).

      To begin with, copyright of fonts is pretty limited, and where it does exist, does not extend to the printed form (i.e., what ends up on paper, as opposed to the digital file).

      However, this story may have a germ of truth as related to fonts embedded in digital files (PDFs mainly, though I believe you can do it with Word too). Many font licenses, if read literally, forbid such embedding -- and that's why there is a "embedding" bit in TrueType that is supposed to tell applications not to embed it. Fortunately, this is almost universally ignored in practice.

  9. open/free font editors by wfmcwalter · · Score: 4, Interesting

    On a related note, can anyone recommend a decent open source / free software graphical font design tool ? I looked into this a few years ago and things deemed to be in a crufty state of disarray. What do folks use now?

    --
    ## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
    1. Re:open/free font editors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Try pfaedit. The user interface is rather spartan but it is very powerful.

  10. Screenshot. by 13Echo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's a screenshot of it on my machine, with OpenOffice.org.

    Vera.

    It's a nice font set to start from. I hope that the community can use it to create a unicode version.

    1. Re:Screenshot. by orev · · Score: 2, Informative

      Don't use jpgs for screenshots. It makes them look horrible. A gif or png is designed for this type of graphic.

  11. A Mirror by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    here

  12. Re:Windows port? by 13Echo · · Score: 4, Informative

    It should be noted that the Vera font sets use very minimal delta hinting, as the documentation states. They are designed with the future of Freetype in mind, and traditional OSX and Windows (Cleartype) may not render them as nicely as they would on a standard Unix/Linux machine. Don't even think about using them without antialiasing, because the glyphs wil render horibly. ;)

    That said, in a few years, when everyone is on LCD displays and are using subpixel hinting, these fonts will look their absolute finest. Freetype seems to be gearing for the future, and may soon be the best looking antialiasing library on any platform.

  13. Postscript? by truenoir · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Any chance for Postscript versions of the font too in case someone wants to use it for serious printing?

  14. Initial thoughts on Vera by Jon+Abbott · · Score: 4, Funny

    Vera sans seems very similar to Verdana, while Vera serif seems very similar to Century. I never previously considered Verdana and Century to be similar (disregarding serifs of course), but Vera draws this strange similarity together quite easily.

    OK, I admit it, I'm a font geek... I can readily identify what fonts that restaurants use on their menus, and so on. If I ever became a superhero, that would probably be one of my superpowers. :^)

    --
    Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
    1. Re:Initial thoughts on Vera by Jon+Abbott · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yeah, Gill Sans seems to be enjoying the same limelight that Officina Sans did a few years back (this is the font that Iomega used for a long time). I have also noticed a slightly increased use of sans fonts with curly lower-case "L" letters -- I really like these though, so I have no complaints. My favorite in this category is the DIN Schriften set, which is used for roadsigns and license plates in Germany.

      --
      Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
  15. Vera! by swordboy · · Score: 2, Funny

    Vera!

    What has become of you?

    Does anybody else in here feel the way I do?

    --

    Life is the leading cause of death in America.
  16. A Review. by Frank+Grimes · · Score: 2, Informative

    I just installed these fonts with

    tar -xjvf ttf-bitstream-vera-1.10.tar.bz2
    cp ttf-bitstream-vera-1.10/*.ttf ~/.fonts/

    They are good looking fonts that render well under X11 with xft. On the other hand, I don't like them that much; as a matter of personal preference, I find them too short and fat.

    --
    CfkRAp1041vYQVbFY1aIwA== RV/hBCLKKcSTP5UFK3kqsg==
  17. Re:work with windows and macintosh.... by ACK!! · · Score: 4, Informative

    XFree86 --

    Download fonts.

    Drop them onto desktop.

    Use KDE's font installer to add them to your list of fonts.

    Alternately for the Redhat8 or 9 set simply copy them into their .fonts dir.

    Silly people.

    --
    ACK /ak/ interj. 2. [from the comic strip "Bloom County"] An exclamation of surprised disgust, esp. i
  18. Beautiful font by Ender+Ryan · · Score: 2, Insightful
    This font is probably the most beautiful font I have ever seen, especially the serif font. It is by far the most easily readable serif font ever. I normally despise serif fonts because I find them pretty unreadable, but Bitstream Vera Serif rocks.

    It's really good to finally have a high-quality free font set.

    FWIW. YMMV.

    --
    Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
  19. Re:work with windows and macintosh.... by 13Echo · · Score: 2, Informative

    On most Gnome machines, you can just copy them to /usr/share/fonts.

  20. Finally, a decent monospaced font! by zsazsa · · Score: 5, Informative

    I just installed these on my Windows machine. The monospace font is excellent. Until now I haven't seen a decent TTF monospace font that was properly hinted to keep it from looking horrible at 9pt, but still nice and smooth at large sizes.

    The Lucida Sans monospace font that came with Windows pales in comparison to Vera Sans Mono, even though the Lucida family was supposedly designed with bitmap screens in mind.

    1. Re:Finally, a decent monospaced font! by oever · · Score: 2, Informative

      I'm using Luxi Mono size 8 in SuSE 8.2 and size set to small in konsole, and I'm very happy with it.
      I'm working on a 800x600 screen and this small fonts allows me to work with two terminals alongside.

      Here's a screenshot.

      --
      DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
    2. Re:Finally, a decent monospaced font! by YellowBook · · Score: 3, Interesting
      The monospace font is excellent. Until now I haven't seen a decent TTF monospace font that was properly hinted to keep it from looking horrible at 9pt, but still nice and smooth at large sizes.

      Andale Mono (the font formerly known as Monotype.com) is quite good. However, at least in the gratis version, it isn't a complete font family; it doesn't have bold and italic. Because of this, it's not perfectly suited for things like terminals or text editors.

      Bitstream Vera Sans is great for these purposes. The betas had some problems (it had a kind of awkward, semi-serifed appearance, and it was hard to distinguish O from 0 and l from 1), but these have been fixed for the release.

      --
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      Yhtill forever. (R. W. Chambers, the King in Yellow
  21. Mandrake Rocks by Christianfreak · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you have Mandrake, untar the directory somewhere

    click 'Mandrake Control Center'
    System-> Fonts-> Advanced

    Click add, select the directory, close the Add window. Click install list. Voila! New fonts no messing with X configs or even restarting it.

    --
    The Anti-Blog
  22. Sorry for being dumb by Loosewire · · Score: 2, Interesting

    But why are fonts so valuable?
    I keep seeing fonts which are expensive to buy.
    Buy fonts???? but their just pictures of letters...
    Again - sorry for being dumb

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    1. Re:Sorry for being dumb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Because someone has to actually draw each character from A-Z, a-z, numbers, funky characters, set the correct kerning for each character, and it all has to look just right at different sizes.

    2. Re:Sorry for being dumb by Jugalator · · Score: 3, Interesting

      But why are fonts so valuable?
      I keep seeing fonts which are expensive to buy.
      Buy fonts???? but their just pictures of letters...

      I think it's because fonts often tend to become associated with a trademark. The font developers probably know this and set the licensing costs accordingly.

      For example... The Lucida Grande font has become associated with the Aqua interface and is further tied into the new Apple "style" since it's used all over www.apple.com.

      Another example... The Exocet font went well-known to all Blizzard fans since it was used in Diablo I and of course also used in Diablo II since it had become closely connected to the Diablo games by then.

      I don't think fonts are often expensive just because it took a long time to create all the letters. It's probably more to it than that.

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    3. Re:Sorry for being dumb by GauteL · · Score: 4, Informative

      Oh.. I'm sorry, but fonts are a HUGE amount of work. Much more than you or the original poster realize. TTF-fonts is much more than just creating a few bitmaps, since they have to scale.

      They have to be hinted to make sure they scale perfectly (which is incredibly hard).

      Creating funky and flashy fonts are mostly much easier than creating very readable fonts. Microsoft paid one of the best font designers to create Verdana and Georgia (actually he was regarded as THE best), and if I remember correctly it took him at least a year.

    4. Re:Sorry for being dumb by Watts+Martin · · Score: 2, Informative

      Because designing a good font--particularly a good body font--is a lot harder than people seem to think it is. And despite what the other reply to you said, it has very little to do with brand names.

      First and foremost, you're designing something that has to be independent of output devices. It has to look perfect on a laser printer and a high-end typesetter, and look at least readable on a screen. These aren't just "pictures of letters," they're mathematical descriptions of letters.

      Second, if you're doing a full font set--one fo the ones that costs you $200, not $25--you're not just designing an alphabet. You're doing upper case, lower case, numbers, punctuation and symbols. Everything on the keyboard. But wait, not just everything on the keyboard. Now do all the letters that have accents, both upper and lower case. Do all the typography symbols--em dashes, en dashes, open and close quotes, fractions, bullets, daggers, European punctuation symbols. All of those are crafted to be matched with a good body font, remember. Oh, yes, don't forget all the ligatures like "ae," "fi", "fl", "ff" (and "ffi" and "ffl," if you're pedantic--and these are just the standard ligatures). Repeat for any symbol combination that's different between upper and lower case, too.

      Now do that all again three times. Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic are, in a good body font, entirely different. Just thickening the lines and tilting the letters doesn't cut it. (This is particularly true for italic.) And, if you're doing this for professonal print use, you'll want to do a true small cap set--they're not just capitals reduced in size, they're subtly reproportioned capitals--and a set of oldstyle numerals. And maybe a few alternate caps, if you're doing a font that could also be used for headline copy. (For the sake of simplicity, we'll assume you're not doing opticals--new versions of the entire set of all those letters, reproportioned to look better at different font sizes. But really professional fonts--including TeX's native Computer Modern--actually do this.)

      Now, keep in mind that when these letters are put together they have to flow correctly. You need to make sure all the letters are spaced just so. Put all the proper metrics into the font so programs that are aware of it (like good desktop publishing programs, or TeX) know how to do this.

      And last but not least, the font has to fulfill its basic function of being easily readable. Even digital fonts are following in the footsteps of an art going back hundreds of years. The strokes and the weights of good typefaces are very carefully designed, down to the subtle differences in periods and the dots on the "i". (Seriously. Take a close look sometime.) It may take a font designer, or at least an experienced typesetter, to be really consciously aware of the differences, but people who aren't trained will still notice a bad font. Something won't be quite right. They'll say it's ugly, it's hard to read. They just won't want to use it.

      If you're only looking for on-screen fonts, sure, the bar is lower. If you're only looking for decorative fonts, the bar is also lower. But there's a reason beyond mere "brand power" that Adobe Chaparral Pro is $200.

  23. Re:.otf by Jugalator · · Score: 3, Informative

    why no opentype? wasnt that meant to be the next big thing?

    Yes, I thought so as well...

    TrueType info, OpenType info, TrueType vs OpenType FAQ.

    The TrueType format was made by Apple. The OpenType format is an extension to TTF, adding support for PostScript font data and designed by Microsoft and Adobe with the following features:

    - broader multi-platform support
    - better support for international character sets
    - better protection for font data
    - smaller file sizes to make font distribution more efficient
    - broader support for advanced typographic control

    This sounds good, but remember MS was part of the design group and this is MS pages. I found this in the FAQ to look fishy in particular:

    Q What does the OpenType initiative mean to Adobe's font business?

    A The OpenType initiative represents a new opportunity for Adobe to expand its font business into the Windows market because Type 1 fonts will now work out of the box on all Windows systems. In addition, because Adobe will license TrueType technology, it will now be able to develop and market TrueType fonts.

    So this could've been a "standard" created by Microsoft and not surprisingly supported by Adobe for the reasons in the FAQ entry I quote above. If that was the major reason for Adobe to support it, it looks more like MS did this "standard" on their own, hoping several others to license it and Adobe simply being an early adopter. I have no idea if this is as properly standardized as TrueType, or if it's more like an "Microsoft extension" which could explain why Bitstream/Gnome didn't want to support it.

    Here's another FAQ entry:

    Q What is being proposed to the World Wide Web Consortium?

    A Adobe and Microsoft together will submit a proposal for Web page font embedding using OpenType to the W3C's working group on style sheets. --snip -- Ultimately we hope that this proposal, or a modified version of it, will be endorsed by the W3C as the standard way to use fonts on the Web.

    The FAQ was never updated to say if W3C did indeed decide to endorse it as a standard for font embedding. If W3C instead decided to go for the much more common TTF format, thinking it should suffice, then that would be yet another reason to not use OpenType fonts.

    Perhaps someone else has more insight into Bitstream's reasons not to use OpenType?

    --
    Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  24. Redhat 9 by kajoob · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I just installed RH9 and the fonts are friggen amazing. Even in Mozilla. I've had XFT running on previous versions of RH and 'borrowed' the TTF's from windows but they still don't look this good. Does anybody know what RH did to make the fonts look this good?

    --
    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
    1. Re:Redhat 9 by CommandNotFound · · Score: 3, Informative

      Pixie dust. Or, more accurately, the xft2 library which renders the fonts. RH8.0 used it, but the Mozilla RH8 shipped with was not compiled against the library unless you compiled it yourself or downloaded the _rh8_xft mozilla rpms. I had no idea how much the font renderer mattered before RH8... pretty much any font looks good onscreen with xft + AA.

      Yes, it is quite impressive, especially considering that without anti-aliasing the Luxi fonts don't look that impressive. This is the first system besides a Mac that I've been able to use anti-aliased fonts and not get a headache or annoyed. I much prefer the RH fonts to my XP box at work, which I set to disable AA below about 14 points because the clarity suffers IMO.

    2. Re:Redhat 9 by KeyserDK · · Score: 3, Informative

      It is not Xft that renders fonts. It's the freetype lib. Xft is a client side API that uses fontconfig to select fonts. If you update your freetype lib to 2.1.4 you will probably see a few more enhancements.

      Instead you should really appreciate the amazing work that has been done by the freetype project. Especially David Turner has been cranking out algorithms to make your linux desktop look nice with AA fonts, even without the patented hinter.

      --
      still reading?
    3. Re:Redhat 9 by be-fan · · Score: 2, Informative

      The other explanation that was posted was a bit inaccurate. I've used FreeType to render in one of my own projects, so I think I can explain things a little better

      Fontconfig -- X-independent library that handles font management. This includes finding font files on the hard drive, mapping them to Xft font names, and matching non-existant font requests to similar available fonts.
      Xft2 -- Xft2 is the actual client API. It's primary job is to handle rendering requests. It auto-detects if XRender is available and uses that to render, or else it falls back to the core X protocol. Xft2 also abstracts many of FreeType's services, such as access to font metrics information.
      FreeType -- This handles the actual rasterization. TrueType/Postscript fonts are stored as vector graphics inside font files. FreeType itself doesn't do any font management (you can't give it a font name for example) or anything like that. The FreeType API consists of functions to open a given font file, and functions to rasterize a given letter (glyph) to a user-provided memory buffer. It also has an API to cache glyphs, so if you rasterize the same letters at the same sizes over and over, you can just use the bitmaps without rasterizing them a gain.

      So the basic thing is that FontConfig actually finds the font files for a given name ("Times New Roman -- 12 pt -- Bold,") Xft2 gets the request to render a string of text with that font, it uses FreeType2 to render each individual character to a buffer, and then uses XRender and it's own algorithms align those bitmaps properly and draw strings of them onto the window.

      --
      A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
  25. Relative Font Sizes by Skidge · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I tried using these fonts in Mozilla, but my problem with them is that the serif font is much larger than Times New Roman on my Windows machine (actually, my problem is that Times New Roman seems to be smaller than most other fonts). Many web designers seem to do their work, font-size-wise, with the default size of Times New Roman as their basis. So when using other fonts (Verdana, for example since it's very popular on the web), they size it down a bit so its comparable to TNR. Before CSS became widespread, TNR would default size="3", and Verdana would usually be set by a designer at size="2", or now with CSS some set Verdana at size=80%. So, when changing out your Serif font to one that's larger, like this new Bitstream one, the pages using the browsers default font seem huge. I moved the default font size down a bit, but then on other pages with relative font sizes everything was tiny.

    Since I can't change the web designing habits of people everywhere, I changed it back to Times New Roman.

    1. Re:Relative Font Sizes by smcv · · Score: 2, Funny

      It's handy, as my eyesight isn't the best and spending 12 hours a day in front of a monitor will -really- stress them out. A quick mutter of "damn designers" when I hit a page that's forcing small font sizes...

      I can just imagine some future speech recognition system where saying "damn designers" to a web browser will switch off animation and enable sensible fonts :-)

  26. Italics? (was slashdot in Vera Serif) by 1u3hr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Very disappointing to see that the serif form has only a regular and bold form, no true italics, so your screenshot shows the loathsome synthetic oblique version -- ie, just distorted the roman, no changes in letterform. Most true italic fonts have distinctive forms for "a", "g", "f". So I'll be sticking to Times or Georgia for my screen fonts. I really HATE it when the OS messes with my fonts -- if there's no real italics, don't give me ersatz

    1. Re:Italics? (was slashdot in Vera Serif) by jg · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There are words about gift horses here that
      might apply...

      In any case, Bitstream had never built
      serif italic faces for Prima, Vera's progenitor.
      - Jim

  27. Anyway, You All Forgot The Most Important Thing... by insin · · Score: 2, Funny

    How does it perform with smilies?

    The slight offset of the monospaced closing round bracket gives your smiles a new and cheeky character of their own.

    Check out some smilies

  28. Computer Modern? by N1KO · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Whenever the topic of fonts comes up, I always see people complain that linux doesn't have good font support.

    The set of fonts that comes with tetex is amazing yet nobody has made a good conversion to use under X (the fonts have a weird encoding that doesn't work well under anything other than tex/latex).

  29. That was easy by Daniel+Phillips · · Score: 2, Informative

    Installing on debian sid turned out to require nothing more than copying the .ttf files to /usr/share/fonts/truetype/, and they were available immediately.

    Comparing to MS Verdana - looks the same, but with more styles. Unlike Verdana, the oblique isn't misnamed as italic. The serif version looks decent as a screen font at small sizes.

    Good, it's as good or better than Verdana in every department, that's one sorta-free font I can lose.

    --
    Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
  30. no latin-2 :( by szo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Would it really hurt to include the characters and ? Damn. Still no good font for us :( Szo

    --
    Red Leader Standing By!
  31. Re:work with windows and macintosh.... by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually, on properly setup gnome 2.2 boxes with fontilus (like redhat 9) just open fonts:// in Nautilus and drop them in. Nothing to it (but you have to know about fonts:// which will be fixed soon).

  32. Why not UTF-8 encoding and default XFree86 fonts? by Quietti · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Given that Gnome 2.2 uses UTF-8 by default, I wonder why these ISO-8859-1/9/15 fonts were not merged into a UTF-8 skeleton to which e.g. Cyrillic, Hellenic and missing Latin glyphs could be added? Then, we would really have a good starting point for what could become a GOOD default system font, not just in Gnome but in XFree86 too.

    Right now, the default Adobe fonts that ship with XFree86 are pretty crap! Granted the URW fonts released thru the Gimp site could be good as well and maybe should replace the tired old Adobe fonts. In any case, I think that, from now on, XFree86 should ship with only 3 fonts by default: serif, sans, mono - all in UTF-8.

    Whether the Type1 URW fonts or these new Bitstream fonts should get that prestigious role remains an open issue, but in any case, the fonts should cover as much of UTF-8 as possible and at least all of the following: Arabic, CJK (simplified forms only), Cyrillic, Latin, Hellenic, Judaic. Once we have that, we have default UTF-8 base fonts equal in strenght to Arial/Times New Roman/Courrier New, which any application can expect to find. This would at least solve the problems experienced by Opera and OpenOffice, for selecting sensible default fonts.

    --
    Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
  33. Main differences with Verdana by P�l@Paris · · Score: 2, Interesting

    now for my .02$

    Main differences between Vera and Verdana fonts, wich both look - almost - exactly the same under windows :

    Verdana in Uppercase is slightly wider

    "Holes" in letter, like in "P", are completely round in Vera whereas the straight line creates a break in the edge of the "hole" in verdana - Which looks far more stylish in Vera

    Uppercase "Q" are straight in Vera and curved in Verdana - Which, again, looks more stylish in Vera
    Lowercase "y" have the same difference, but Vera and Verdana inverted - strange ...

    Lowercase "j" and uppercase "I" and "J" are quite "serifed" in Verdana and not in Vera - and that, for a general purpose screen font is quite ennoying in Vera, because it is far less readeable (but less stylish ;) )

    I reckon because of the readeablility of "i" and "j", I'll stick to Verdana

    I'm still amazed how much the two fonts look alike.

  34. Re:Italics? by 1u3hr · · Score: 2, Informative
    I dug around and found this on gnomedesktop.org.
    Re: Vera fonts status...
    by jg on Wednesday, April 16 @ 13:58:57 EST

    No Serif italic or bold italic for the time being. Sorry.

    Jim Lyles is pretty happy (as happy as one can be) about the artificial obliquing that Xft/ Fontconfig will perform, so you can get something that looks like it in applications like mozilla.
    - Jim

    Well, I hope he reconsiders.
  35. While your at it, download more GPL fonts by Dustismo · · Score: 2, Informative

    While your installing Vera may as well install some more open source fonts. http://www.dustismo.com/site/fonts.html -Dustin

  36. Re:Italics? by jg · · Score: 3, Informative

    Jim would of course prefer to have the
    time to build serif italic faces; but the
    artificial obliqing (for most, but not all
    people) is preferable than having the
    faces indistinguisable or choosing a different
    family.

    He did say if he somehow got the opportunity,
    he'd build them at the angle we use in fontconfig
    by default (I think it is 10degrees).

    I believe you can tell fontconfig not to use the
    artificial obliquing if you want to.
    - Jim