Bitstream/Gnome Release Vera Font Family 363
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.
Windows port? (Score:0, Interesting)
.otf (Score:1, Interesting)
Work on Windows? (Score:2, Interesting)
copyright, etc (Score:5, Interesting)
open/free font editors (Score:5, Interesting)
Postscript? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry for being dumb (Score:2, Interesting)
I keep seeing fonts which are expensive to buy.
Buy fonts???? but their just pictures of letters...
Again - sorry for being dumb
Re:Here's slashdot in Bitstream Vera Serif (Score:1, Interesting)
Thats with the standard font set to sans-serif, witht he sans-serif set to Vera Sans. Funnily enough, monospace and serif are set to their appropriate Vera's.
Nice font, think I'll stick to it over arial. If you think I've got it set a little small it's because it's on a Dell laptop's lcd screen, and suits my positioning/eyesight just fine. The Phoenix theme is Breeze, GTK theme is a modified flaaat.
Redhat 9 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Initial thoughts on Vera (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sorry for being dumb (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Relative Font Sizes (Score:4, Interesting)
Since I can't change the web designing habits of people everywhere, I changed it back to Times New Roman.
Re:copyright, etc (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'm obviously retarded (Score:3, Interesting)
My preferred font is Lucida Grande, followed closely by Helvetica.
Re:Finally, a decent monospaced font! (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:I'm obviously retarded (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:copyright, etc (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Computer Modern? (Score:2, Interesting)
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).
no latin-2 :( (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'm obviously retarded (Score:1, Interesting)
For screen-reading, have you tried Georgia? It's surprisingly easy on the eyes. I have Safari set to display it at 14 pt. Also, it's got those old-style numerals, and that's just cool.
Generally, I find serif fonts to be a lot less tiring over the long haul than sans-serif fonts.
Why not UTF-8 encoding and default XFree86 fonts? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Main differences with Verdana (Score:2, Interesting)
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.