The font stack will not affect the amount of tofu. Browsers and operating systems are smart enough to apply fonts to cover as many glyphs as possible even if they aren't specified in the font stack. (I've tested this assumption on MacOS, Windows, and Linux in the past, although I'll admit I haven't actually tested every single browser.) The only way to reduce tofu is to use webfonts (or install more fonts). The technical issues are generally around glyphs that a font supports, but supports poorly, for example, meager or poorly executed kerning pairs, lack of hinting, or lack of adequate glyph positioning data. Overall, I expect the technical impact to be quite limited.

I'll let others reply to the more subjective issues.

Ryan Kaldari


On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 3:05 PM, Quiddity <pandiculation@gmail.com> wrote:
On 14-03-10 10:22 AM, Greg Grossmeier wrote:
I just want the conversation to be more honest about who's benefiting
here.


== Technical considerations ==

This is what I think a few people are asking (in various ways/words):

* Given that the fontstack is (generally) specifying the fonts that people are already getting by default,
* Which cohorts of users are going to see a change?
* and in what ways will this change affect them?

Ie. Someone that has "Futura" as their browser/OS default font, and is used to seeing many of their favourite sites with that font.
- Will the new fontstack fix any [tofu/questionmarks/mojibake][1] for them?
- How else will it affect them?
- Who else will it affect?

We're just trying to investigate the repercussions of this change, before it goes live to (n)million people per day.
What are the technical pros and cons, both abstractly and for specific use-cases?
Who exactly will be impacted, and what might we want to preemptively prepare or consider, in order to assist them?

More details = more insights/understanding, hence all the questions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojibake#Example and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U%2BFFFD#Replacement_character


== Free / Open advocacy considerations ==

What do we /encourage/, and what do we standardize around as "default/target/pinnacle/goal"?
Which aspects or factors of the choice have highest priority?
The current Typography refresh fontstack says:
@content-font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
which doesn't seem to encourage the further development of free typefaces, at all.



includes a benefit for people who will now get Liberation instead of
DejaVu (right?).


(Or Nimbus Sans L, for us Firefox users)

Again here, we're just looking for a clear explanation about what exactly the benefits/drawbacks are.

Doing some reading, it appears that Liberation&Nimbus closely match the width and height of Helvetica&Ariel (metrically compatible), which would aid the "consistency" goal.  How else are these and the other fonts good choices? Kaldari made a good start here, but it needs more details: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh/Font_choice#Body_font_evaluation

I'm used to DejaVu, but I'm looking forward to the gentle fontsize increase, and DejaVu looks oddly bolded at 0.875em, so I'm happy to give the change a try, both to see if I can adjust, and so that I'm seeing the same thing our readers are (generally) getting.

The best recent guides that I can find quickly, are:[3][4]

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts#Unicode_coverage and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DejaVu_fonts#Unicode_coverage
[3] http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/a-web-designers-guide-to-linux-fonts/
[4] http://www.grputland.com/2013/11/multiplatform-helvetica-like-font-stack.html
and http://www.grputland.com/2012/08/font-stacks-that-look-similar-in.html

As ever, HTH.


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