annotate .svn/pristine/e5/e5e1ad43baf0abb2a829f70671bb4b2174f60107.svn-base @ 1628:9c5f8e24dadc live tip

Quieten this cron script
author Chris Cannam
date Tue, 25 Aug 2020 11:38:49 +0100
parents cbb26bc654de
children
rev   line source
Chris@909 1 Bitstream Vera Fonts - April 16, 2003
Chris@909 2 =====================================
Chris@909 3
Chris@909 4 The version number of these fonts is 1.10 to distinguish them from the
Chris@909 5 beta test fonts.
Chris@909 6
Chris@909 7 Note that the Vera copyright is incorporated in the fonts themselves.
Chris@909 8 The License field in the fonts contains the copyright license as it
Chris@909 9 appears below. The TrueType copyright field is not large enough to
Chris@909 10 contain the full license, so the license is incorporated (as you might
Chris@909 11 think if you thought about it) into the license field, which
Chris@909 12 unfortunately can be obscure to find. (In pfaedit, see: Element->Font
Chris@909 13 Info->TTFNames->License).
Chris@909 14
Chris@909 15 Our apologies for it taking longer to complete the fonts than planned.
Chris@909 16 Beta testers requested a tighter line spacing (less leading) and Jim
Chris@909 17 Lyles redesigned Vera's accents to bring its line spacing to more
Chris@909 18 typical of other fonts. This took additional time and effort. Our
Chris@909 19 thanks to Jim for this effort above and beyond the call of duty.
Chris@909 20
Chris@909 21 There are four monospace and sans faces (normal, oblique, bold, bold
Chris@909 22 oblique) and two serif faces (normal and bold). Fontconfig/Xft2 (see
Chris@909 23 www.fontconfig.org) can artificially oblique the serif faces for you:
Chris@909 24 this loses hinting and distorts the faces slightly, but is visibly
Chris@909 25 different than normal and bold, and reasonably pleasing.
Chris@909 26
Chris@909 27 On systems with fontconfig 2.0 or 2.1 installed, making your sans,
Chris@909 28 serif and monospace fonts default to these fonts is very easy. Just
Chris@909 29 drop the file local.conf into your /etc/fonts directory. This will
Chris@909 30 make the Bitstream fonts your default fonts for all applications using
Chris@909 31 fontconfig (if sans, serif, or monospace names are used, as they often
Chris@909 32 are as default values in many desktops). The XML in local.conf may
Chris@909 33 need modification to enable subpixel decimation, if appropriate,
Chris@909 34 however, the commented out phrase does so for XFree86 4.3, in the case
Chris@909 35 that the server does not have sufficient information to identify the
Chris@909 36 use of a flat panel. Fontconfig 2.2 adds Vera to the list of font
Chris@909 37 families and will, by default use it as the default sans, serif and
Chris@909 38 monospace fonts.
Chris@909 39
Chris@909 40 During the testing of the final Vera fonts, we learned that screen
Chris@909 41 fonts in general are only typically hinted to work correctly at
Chris@909 42 integer pixel sizes. Vera is coded internally for integer sizes only.
Chris@909 43 We need to investigate further to see if there are commonly used fonts
Chris@909 44 that are hinted to be rounded but are not rounded to integer sizes due
Chris@909 45 to oversights in their coding.
Chris@909 46
Chris@909 47 Most fonts work best at 8 pixels and below if anti-aliased only, as
Chris@909 48 the amount of work required to hint well at smaller and smaller sizes
Chris@909 49 becomes astronomical. GASP tables are typically used to control
Chris@909 50 whether hinting is used or not, but Freetype/Xft does not currently
Chris@909 51 support GASP tables (which are present in Vera).
Chris@909 52
Chris@909 53 To mitigate this problem, both for Vera and other fonts, there will be
Chris@909 54 (very shortly) a new fontconfig 2.2 release that will, by default not
Chris@909 55 apply hints if the size is below 8 pixels. if you should have a font
Chris@909 56 that in fact has been hinted more agressively, you can use fontconfig
Chris@909 57 to note this exception. We believe this should improve many hinted
Chris@909 58 fonts in addition to Vera, though implemeting GASP support is likely
Chris@909 59 the right long term solution.
Chris@909 60
Chris@909 61 Font rendering in Gnome or KDE is the combination of algorithms in
Chris@909 62 Xft2 and Freetype, along with hinting in the fonts themselves. It is
Chris@909 63 vital to have sufficient information to disentangle problems that you
Chris@909 64 may observe.
Chris@909 65
Chris@909 66 Note that having your font rendering system set up correctly is vital
Chris@909 67 to proper judgement of problems of the fonts:
Chris@909 68
Chris@909 69 # Freetype may or may not be configured to in ways that may
Chris@909 70 implement execution of possibly patented (in some parts of the world)
Chris@909 71 TrueType hinting algorithms, particularly at small sizes. Best
Chris@909 72 results are obtained while using these algorithms.
Chris@909 73
Chris@909 74 # The freetype autohinter (used when the possibly patented
Chris@909 75 algorithms are not used) continues to improve with each release. If
Chris@909 76 you are using the autohinter, please ensure you are using an up to
Chris@909 77 date version of freetype before reporting problems.
Chris@909 78
Chris@909 79 # Please identify what version of freetype you are using in any
Chris@909 80 bug reports, and how your freetype is configured.
Chris@909 81
Chris@909 82 # Make sure you are not using the freetype version included in
Chris@909 83 XFree86 4.3, as it has bugs that significantly degrade most fonts,
Chris@909 84 including Vera. if you build XFree86 4.3 from source yourself, you may
Chris@909 85 have installed this broken version without intending it (as I
Chris@909 86 did). Vera was verified with the recently released Freetype 2.1.4. On
Chris@909 87 many systems, 'ldd" can be used to see which freetype shared library
Chris@909 88 is actually being used.
Chris@909 89
Chris@909 90 # Xft/X Render does not (yet) implement gamma correction. This
Chris@909 91 causes significant problems rendering white text on a black background
Chris@909 92 (causing partial pixels to be insufficiently shaded) if the gamma of
Chris@909 93 your monitor has not been compensated for, and minor problems with
Chris@909 94 black text on a while background. The program "xgamma" can be used to
Chris@909 95 set a gamma correction value in the X server's color pallette. Most
Chris@909 96 monitors have a gamma near 2.
Chris@909 97
Chris@909 98 # Note that the Vera family uses minimal delta hinting. Your
Chris@909 99 results on other systems when not used anti-aliased may not be
Chris@909 100 entirely satisfying. We are primarily interested in reports of
Chris@909 101 problems on open source systems implementing Xft2/fontconfig/freetype
Chris@909 102 (which implements antialiasing and hinting adjustements, and
Chris@909 103 sophisticated subpixel decimation on flatpanels). Also, the
Chris@909 104 algorithms used by Xft2 adjust the hints to integer widths and the
Chris@909 105 results are crisper on open source systems than on Windows or
Chris@909 106 MacIntosh.
Chris@909 107
Chris@909 108 # Your fontconfig may (probably does) predate the release of
Chris@909 109 fontconfig 2.2, and you may see artifacts not present when the font is
Chris@909 110 used at very small sizes with hinting enabled. "vc-list -V" can be
Chris@909 111 used to see what version you have installed.
Chris@909 112
Chris@909 113 We believe and hope that these fonts will resolve the problems
Chris@909 114 reported during beta test. The largest change is the reduction of
Chris@909 115 leading (interline spacing), which had annoyed a number of people, and
Chris@909 116 reduced Vera's utility for some applcations. The Vera monospace font
Chris@909 117 should also now make '0' and 'O' and '1' and 'l' more clearly
Chris@909 118 distinguishable.
Chris@909 119
Chris@909 120 The version of these fonts is version 1.10. Fontconfig should be
Chris@909 121 choosing the new version of the fonts if both the released fonts and
Chris@909 122 beta test fonts are installed (though please discard them: they have
Chris@909 123 names of form tt20[1-12]gn.ttf). Note that older versions of
Chris@909 124 fontconfig sometimes did not rebuild their cache correctly when new
Chris@909 125 fonts are installed: please upgrade to fontconfig 2.2. "fc-cache -f"
Chris@909 126 can be used to force rebuilding fontconfig's cache files.
Chris@909 127
Chris@909 128 If you note problems, please send them to fonts at gnome dot org, with
Chris@909 129 exactly which face and size and unicode point you observe the problem
Chris@909 130 at. The xfd utility from XFree86 CVS may be useful for this (e.g. "xfd
Chris@909 131 -fa sans"). A possibly more useful program to examine fonts at a
Chris@909 132 variety of sizes is the "waterfall" program found in Keith Packard's
Chris@909 133 CVS.
Chris@909 134
Chris@909 135 $ cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@keithp.com:/local/src/CVS login
Chris@909 136 Logging in to :pserver:anoncvs@keithp.com:2401/local/src/CVS
Chris@909 137 CVS password: <hit return>
Chris@909 138 $ cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@keithp.com:/local/src/CVS co waterfall
Chris@909 139 $ cd waterfall
Chris@909 140 $ xmkmf -a
Chris@909 141 $ make
Chris@909 142 # make install
Chris@909 143 # make install.man
Chris@909 144
Chris@909 145 Again, please make sure you are running an up-to-date freetype, and
Chris@909 146 that you are only examining integer sizes.
Chris@909 147
Chris@909 148 Reporting Problems
Chris@909 149 ==================
Chris@909 150
Chris@909 151 Please send problem reports to fonts at gnome org, with the following
Chris@909 152 information:
Chris@909 153
Chris@909 154 1. Version of Freetype, Xft2 and fontconfig
Chris@909 155 2. Whether TT hinting is being used, or the autohinter
Chris@909 156 3. Application being used
Chris@909 157 4. Character/Unicode code point that has problems (if applicable)
Chris@909 158 5. Version of which operating system
Chris@909 159 6. Please include a screenshot, when possible.
Chris@909 160
Chris@909 161 Please check the fonts list archives before reporting problems to cut
Chris@909 162 down on duplication.