we should also consider changing bitstream vera sans mono to a font that have unicode support. like dejavu sans mono:Ah! ok - great!
http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
it looks the same i think, have a free licence, and lots of characters are included: http://dejavu.sf.net/samples/DejaVuSansMono.pdf
best, gabor
