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