On 14-03-03 03:24 PM, Steven Walling wrote:
On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 3:07 PM, Isarra Yos <zhorishna@gmail.com mailto:zhorishna@gmail.com> wrote:
Has it ever been specified why mw needs a font stack in the first place? Sure, when specifying only the generic type of font, the fonts different systems chose do look a bit different, but why is this a bad thing? From what I understand, these fonts are usually the most readable ones for the systems in question, hence why they are the defaults. So why do we want to override this?MediaWiki itself does not really have a font stack, and no one is pushing for core to have new font settings that impact all skins. Individual skins have font stacks, and the Typography Refresh beta feature on Wikimedia sites impacts Vector's font stack. Vector itself was redesigned primarily with Wikimedia use cases in mind, and this is being carried forward in the beta. But for MediaWiki in general, no change is being requested, and people are encouraged to hack the site CSS however they like on a third party install or as needed locally through Common.css or personal CSS.
Currently, the font stack[1-3] for:
* Vector/Monobook/Modern is: sans-serif
* Vector-beta (typography refresh) is: "Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif
* mobile is: "Helvetica Neue","Helvetica","Nimbus Sans L","Arial","Liberation Sans",sans-serif
* Cologne Blue is: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif
I believe Isaara is asking: Given that we won't be able to achieve cross-platform/browser consistency,[4] why are we changing (Vector-beta) anything?
The main answer (afaik) is, "A consistent visual experience across desktop and mobile."[5]
Possibly, it will also help with accessibility, if a user has accidentally set their browser-default to something terrible?
Are there additional rationales?
==References== 1. https://git.wikimedia.org/tree/mediawiki%2Fcore.git 2. https://git.wikimedia.org/tree/mediawiki%2Fextensions%2FVectorBeta.git 3. https://git.wikimedia.org/tree/mediawiki%2Fextensions%2FMobileFrontend.git 4. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/design/2014-February/001511.html 5. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh