Bitstream Vera

{{Short description|Typeface series from Bitstream}}

{{Infobox typeface

| name = Vera Sans

| familyname =

| image = VeraSansSpecimen.svg

| style = Sans-serif

| classifications = Humanist

| creator = Jim Lyles

| commissioned_by =

| foundry = Bitstream Inc.

| foundries =

| creationdate = 2001

| releasedate =

| trademark =

| metrically_compatible_with = Verdana

| aka = Bera

| variations =

| sample =

| shown_here =

| sample_fullimage =

| arabic =

| cyrillic =

| devangari =

| greek =

| hebrew =

| ipa =

| latin =

| license = Commercial; open-source

}}

Vera is a digital typeface (computer font) superfamily with a liberal license. It was designed by Jim Lyles from the now-defunct Bitstream Inc. type foundry, and it is closely based on Bitstream Prima, for which Lyles was also responsible. It is a TrueType font with full hinting instructions, which improve its rendering quality on low-resolution devices such as computer monitors. The font has also been repackaged as a Type 1 PostScript font, called Bera, for LaTeX users.{{cite web |url=http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/bera/ |title="Bera" font pack for LaTeX |date=2004-09-30 |author1=Rosenau, M |author2=Schmidt, W. }}

Vera consists of serif, sans-serif, and monospace fonts. The Bitstream Vera Sans Mono typeface in particular is suitable for technical work, as it clearly distinguishes "l" (lowercase L) from "1" (one) and "I" (uppercase i), and "0" (zero) from "O" (uppercase o), in similar fashion as Verdana and Tahoma fonts.

Bitstream Vera Sans is also the default font used by the Python library Matplotlib to produce plots.{{cite web |url=http://matplotlib.org/users/dflt_style_changes.html#fonts |title=Matplotlib fonts |date=2017-03-14}}