On 14-03-03 03:24 PM, Steven Walling wrote:
On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 3:07 PM, Isarra Yos <zhorishna(a)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