The bug seems to be corrected now in recent Bitstream Vera for Ubuntu
7.10 amd64
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Bitstream font do not contain iso-8859-2 characters
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/11180
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ubuntu-bugs
Is this the same problem?
Characters like o (o with top acute) or o-umlaut (o with two dots on
top) are displayed incorrectly in this fonts.
In attachment a PDF to illustrate the problem
** Attachment added: "compare fonts - bug in bitstream vera sans"
http://launchpadlibrarian.net/11075847/l