[Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Srikanth Lakshmanan]

On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 07:33, Subhashish Panigrahi
<psubhashish at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> While testing both Lohit and Utkal has hinting problems in or wp, is that
> possible to keep them optional? As of now automatically the default font
> changes to Lohit when you open or wp, instead of that is that possible to
> make it optional which someone can choose the dropdown?


Welcome to the world finally! Go read the bug[1] for a start. In summary
i18n team feels the purpose of extension gets defeated if its not set as
default. I tried convincing them for days it wont get defeated, but this is
a PoV debate and solution remains at heart :). If you feel having the
default fonts with hinting issue will affect many more people than it would
benefit(In case of Tamil it was over 10x), then file a bug for removing
WebFonts for or wp. But what next? 2 options.

1. If fonts are bad and have hinting issues, {{SOFIXIT}} . Suggest to
Santhosh what are the issues, where it could get better, he will try his
best and do as much as he can do. We did the same for Tamil, Lohit-Tamil is
improved than what upstream gave, but there is a limitation here as to how
much Santhosh can help since he is not a professional typographer and you
may not be satisfied very much with font even after the exercise (like we
are). There is also delivery issue which needs to be sorted if we are going
to go this way since Win 7, most linux OS dont have hinting issue but win
xp has it.

2. Get more free fonts. Look out for other free(ly licensed) fonts,
convince people to release fonts under free license.Create a new
font(Easier said than done,but its not Impossible). Beg,Borrow (no Steal
doesnt apply here :D, Acquire probably applies in case money is only thing
stopping, then a reasonable grant request might help). In short get
alternative fonts which can be used.

[1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31936#c2

-- 
Regards
Srikanth.L
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/attachments/20111220/88828fb6/attachment.htm