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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.

21 of 359 comments (clear)

  1. 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?

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    1. 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.

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

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

    3. 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.

    4. 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

  2. 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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    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...

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

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

    click here

  6. 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 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.

  7. 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?

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    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.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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?

  11. 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. :^)

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  12. 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.

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  13. 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.

  14. 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.