Bitstream Vera Fonts - April 16, 2003<br />
=====================================<br />
<br />
The version number of these fonts is 1.10 to distinguish them from the<br />
beta test fonts.<br />
<br />
Note that the Vera copyright is incorporated in the fonts themselves.<br />
The License field in the fonts contains the copyright license as it<br />
appears below. The TrueType copyright field is not large enough to<br />
contain the full license, so the license is incorporated (as you might<br />
think if you thought about it) into the license field, which<br />
unfortunately can be obscure to find.  (In pfaedit, see: Element->Font<br />
Info->TTFNames->License).<br />
<br />
Our apologies for it taking longer to complete the fonts than planned.<br />
Beta testers requested a tighter line spacing (less leading) and Jim<br />
Lyles redesigned Vera's accents to bring its line spacing to more<br />
typical of other fonts.  This took additional time and effort.  Our<br />
thanks to Jim for this effort above and beyond the call of duty.<br />
<br />
There are four monospace and sans faces (normal, oblique, bold, bold<br />
oblique) and two serif faces (normal and bold). Fontconfig/Xft2 (see<br />
www.fontconfig.org) can artificially oblique the serif faces for you:<br />
this loses hinting and distorts the faces slightly, but is visibly<br />
different than normal and bold, and reasonably pleasing.<br />
<br />
On systems with fontconfig 2.0 or 2.1 installed, making your sans,<br />
serif and monospace fonts default to these fonts is very easy.  Just<br />
drop the file local.conf into your /etc/fonts directory.  This will<br />
make the Bitstream fonts your default fonts for all applications using<br />
fontconfig (if sans, serif, or monospace names are used, as they often<br />
are as default values in many desktops). The XML in local.conf may<br />
need modification to enable subpixel decimation, if appropriate,<br />
however, the commented out phrase does so for XFree86 4.3, in the case<br />
that the server does not have sufficient information to identify the<br />
use of a flat panel.  Fontconfig 2.2 adds Vera to the list of font<br />
families and will, by default use it as the default sans, serif and<br />
monospace fonts.<br />
<br />
During the testing of the final Vera fonts, we learned that screen<br />
fonts in general are only typically hinted to work correctly at<br />
integer pixel sizes.  Vera is coded internally for integer sizes only.<br />
We need to investigate further to see if there are commonly used fonts<br />
that are hinted to be rounded but are not rounded to integer sizes due<br />
to oversights in their coding.<br />
<br />
Most fonts work best at 8 pixels and below if anti-aliased only, as<br />
the amount of work required to hint well at smaller and smaller sizes<br />
becomes astronomical.  GASP tables are typically used to control<br />
whether hinting is used or not, but Freetype/Xft does not currently<br />
support GASP tables (which are present in Vera).<br />
<br />
To mitigate this problem, both for Vera and other fonts, there will be<br />
(very shortly) a new fontconfig 2.2 release that will, by default not<br />
apply hints if the size is below 8 pixels. if you should have a font<br />
that in fact has been hinted more agressively, you can use fontconfig<br />
to note this exception. We believe this should improve many hinted<br />
fonts in addition to Vera, though implemeting GASP support is likely<br />
the right long term solution.<br />
<br />
Font rendering in Gnome or KDE is the combination of algorithms in<br />
Xft2 and Freetype, along with hinting in the fonts themselves. It is<br />
vital to have sufficient information to disentangle problems that you<br />
may observe.<br />
<br />
Note that having your font rendering system set up correctly is vital<br />
to proper judgement of problems of the fonts:<br />
<br />
    * Freetype may or may not be configured to in ways that may<br />
      implement execution of possibly patented (in some parts of the world)<br />
      TrueType hinting algorithms, particularly at small sizes.  Best<br />
      results are obtained while using these algorithms.<br />
<br />
    * The freetype autohinter (used when the possibly patented<br />
      algorithms are not used) continues to improve with each release. If<br />
      you are using the autohinter, please ensure you are using an up to<br />
      date version of freetype before reporting problems.<br />
<br />
    * Please identify what version of freetype you are using in any<br />
      bug reports, and how your freetype is configured.<br />
<br />
    * Make sure you are not using the freetype version included in<br />
      XFree86 4.3, as it has bugs that significantly degrade most fonts,<br />
      including Vera. if you build XFree86 4.3 from source yourself, you may<br />
      have installed this broken version without intending it (as I<br />
      did). Vera was verified with the recently released Freetype 2.1.4. On<br />
      many systems, 'ldd" can be used to see which freetype shared library<br />
      is actually being used.<br />
<br />
    * Xft/X Render does not (yet) implement gamma correction.  This<br />
      causes significant problems rendering white text on a black background<br />
      (causing partial pixels to be insufficiently shaded) if the gamma of<br />
      your monitor has not been compensated for, and minor problems with<br />
      black text on a while background.  The program "xgamma" can be used to<br />
      set a gamma correction value in the X server's color pallette. Most<br />
      monitors have a gamma near 2.<br />
<br />
    * Note that the Vera family uses minimal delta hinting. Your<br />
      results on other systems when not used anti-aliased may not be<br />
      entirely satisfying. We are primarily interested in reports of<br />
      problems on open source systems implementing Xft2/fontconfig/freetype<br />
      (which implements antialiasing and hinting adjustements, and<br />
      sophisticated subpixel decimation on flatpanels).  Also, the<br />
      algorithms used by Xft2 adjust the hints to integer widths and the<br />
      results are crisper on open source systems than on Windows or<br />
      MacIntosh.<br />
<br />
    * Your fontconfig may (probably does) predate the release of<br />
      fontconfig 2.2, and you may see artifacts not present when the font is<br />
      used at very small sizes with hinting enabled. "vc-list -V" can be<br />
      used to see what version you have installed.<br />
<br />
We believe and hope that these fonts will resolve the problems<br />
reported during beta test.  The largest change is the reduction of<br />
leading (interline spacing), which had annoyed a number of people, and<br />
reduced Vera's utility for some applcations.  The Vera monospace font<br />
should also now make '0' and 'O' and '1' and 'l' more clearly<br />
distinguishable.<br />
<br />
The version of these fonts is version 1.10.  Fontconfig should be<br />
choosing the new version of the fonts if both the released fonts and<br />
beta test fonts are installed (though please discard them: they have<br />
names of form tt20[1-12]gn.ttf).  Note that older versions of<br />
fontconfig sometimes did not rebuild their cache correctly when new<br />
fonts are installed: please upgrade to fontconfig 2.2. "fc-cache -f"<br />
can be used to force rebuilding fontconfig's cache files.<br />
<br />
If you note problems, please send them to fonts at gnome dot org, with<br />
exactly which face and size and unicode point you observe the problem<br />
at. The xfd utility from XFree86 CVS may be useful for this (e.g. "xfd<br />
-fa sans").  A possibly more useful program to examine fonts at a<br />
variety of sizes is the "waterfall" program found in Keith Packard's<br />
CVS.<br />
<br />
        $ cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@keithp.com:/local/src/CVS login<br />
        Logging in to :pserver:anoncvs@keithp.com:2401/local/src/CVS<br />
        CVS password: <hit return><br />
        $ cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@keithp.com:/local/src/CVS co waterfall<br />
        $ cd waterfall<br />
        $ xmkmf -a<br />
        $ make<br />
        # make install<br />
        # make install.man<br />
<br />
Again, please make sure you are running an up-to-date freetype, and<br />
that you are only examining integer sizes.<br />
<br />
Reporting Problems<br />
==================<br />
<br />
Please send problem reports to fonts at gnome org, with the following<br />
information:<br />
<br />
   1. Version of Freetype, Xft2 and fontconfig<br />
   2. Whether TT hinting is being used, or the autohinter<br />
   3. Application being used<br />
   4. Character/Unicode code point that has problems (if applicable)<br />
   5. Version of which operating system<br />
   6. Please include a screenshot, when possible.<br />
<br />
Please check the fonts list archives before reporting problems to cut<br />
down on duplication.<br />