On 10/27/2013 03:37 PM, Steven Walling wrote:
Many FOSS communities have dealt with the trade off between great-looking fonts and freedom by commissioning foundries to get their own free fonts. See also: Ubuntu, Android, and more. I've talked to the design team about this idea, including perhaps getting a foundry to donate a unique font stack in exchange for the publicity they'd get.
Do we really need our own, or are there already quality free fonts we can list? Has the design team taken a good look at the existing free fonts?
My general position is that it is not a violation of our principles to list a proprietary font in the stack. However, we should never *distribute* such a font.
I would prefer that free fonts appear first, and that is more workable if we can find good free fonts that suit our design needs. We should also ensure that the interface does not look worse in the future than it does today, when using free fonts.
Also, remember that font-matchers may substitute a free font when they are given a proprietary font name.
Matt Flaschen
CCing design
Matt,
We have an action item to change the order from the free fonts that are visually similar to the specified non-free fonts, I don't think* that this will change the experience for user without those fonts but we'd have to do some testing, it really comes down to if we specify Helvetica Neue, and a particular system thinks that should match a different free font than the one we thought was a best match.
Since we're so close to launch I'd prefer we don't make the change now, get some feedback from the current ordering, then change as needed, since that's the spirit of Beta Features.
* * * * *Jared Zimmerman * \ Director of User Experience \ Wikimedia Foundation
M : +1 415 609 4043 | : @JaredZimmermanhttps://twitter.com/JaredZimmerman
On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 12:38 PM, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.orgwrote:
On 10/27/2013 03:37 PM, Steven Walling wrote:
Many FOSS communities have dealt with the trade off between great-looking fonts and freedom by commissioning foundries to get their own free fonts. See also: Ubuntu, Android, and more. I've talked to the design team about this idea, including perhaps getting a foundry to donate a unique font stack in exchange for the publicity they'd get.
Do we really need our own, or are there already quality free fonts we can list? Has the design team taken a good look at the existing free fonts?
My general position is that it is not a violation of our principles to list a proprietary font in the stack. However, we should never *distribute* such a font.
I would prefer that free fonts appear first, and that is more workable if we can find good free fonts that suit our design needs. We should also ensure that the interface does not look worse in the future than it does today, when using free fonts.
Also, remember that font-matchers may substitute a free font when they are given a proprietary font name.
Matt Flaschen
CCing design
______________________________**_________________ Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/designhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 12:51 PM, Jared Zimmerman < jared.zimmerman@wikimedia.org> wrote:
We have an action item to change the order from the free fonts that are visually similar to the specified non-free fonts, I don't think* that this will change the experience for user without those fonts but we'd have to do some testing, it really comes down to if we specify Helvetica Neue, and a particular system thinks that should match a different free font than the one we thought was a best match.
Just to confirm: I did a quick test, and it appears that on OSX (10.9) Chrome and Firefox interpret font family settings the same using the order Tim suggested. So the output is still Georgia headings and Helvetica Neue body.
One question... it seems like specifying Helvetica regular and Neue is slightly redundant. Is there are reason we don't cut Helvetica regular from the list?
On 2013-10-29 1:13 PM, Steven Walling wrote:
On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 12:51 PM, Jared Zimmerman <jared.zimmerman@wikimedia.org mailto:jared.zimmerman@wikimedia.org> wrote:
We have an action item to change the order from the free fonts that are visually similar to the specified non-free fonts, I don't think* that this will change the experience for user without those fonts but we'd have to do some testing, it really comes down to if we specify Helvetica Neue, and a particular system thinks that should match a different free font than the one we thought was a best match.Just to confirm: I did a quick test, and it appears that on OSX (10.9) Chrome and Firefox interpret font family settings the same using the order Tim suggested. So the output is still Georgia headings and Helvetica Neue body.
One question... it seems like specifying Helvetica regular and Neue is slightly redundant. Is there are reason we don't cut Helvetica regular from the list? From my memory there were versions of OSX that had Helvetica but not
Helvetica Neue. Hence `"Helvetica Neue", "Helvetica"` will pick the best Helvetica available for the computer.
Makes sense since Helvetica Neue was an iteration that was created later than Helvetica.
~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://danielfriesen.name/]
Thanks Daniel, thats what I was about to write, to expand, we just wanted to make sure that we fail down to Helvetica rather than something else we're not specifying.
* * * * *Jared Zimmerman * \ Director of User Experience \ Wikimedia Foundation
M : +1 415 609 4043 | : @JaredZimmermanhttps://twitter.com/JaredZimmerman
On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 1:27 PM, Daniel Friesen daniel@nadir-seen-fire.comwrote:
On 2013-10-29 1:13 PM, Steven Walling wrote:
On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 12:51 PM, Jared Zimmerman < jared.zimmerman@wikimedia.org> wrote:
We have an action item to change the order from the free fonts that are visually similar to the specified non-free fonts, I don't think* that this will change the experience for user without those fonts but we'd have to do some testing, it really comes down to if we specify Helvetica Neue, and a particular system thinks that should match a different free font than the one we thought was a best match.
Just to confirm: I did a quick test, and it appears that on OSX (10.9) Chrome and Firefox interpret font family settings the same using the order Tim suggested. So the output is still Georgia headings and Helvetica Neue body.
One question... it seems like specifying Helvetica regular and Neue is slightly redundant. Is there are reason we don't cut Helvetica regular from the list?
From my memory there were versions of OSX that had Helvetica but not Helvetica Neue. Hence `"Helvetica Neue", "Helvetica"` will pick the best Helvetica available for the computer.
Makes sense since Helvetica Neue was an iteration that was created later than Helvetica.
~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://danielfriesen.name/]
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
They are different fonts from different font families, not members of the same family, and Helvetica is far, far more common than Helvetica Neue.
On Oct 29, 2013, at 10:13 AM, Steven Walling swalling@wikimedia.org wrote:
One question... it seems like specifying Helvetica regular and Neue is slightly redundant. Is there are reason we don't cut Helvetica regular from the list?
--- Brandon Harris, Senior Designer, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 1:46 PM, Brandon Harris bharris@wikimedia.orgwrote:
They are different fonts from different font families, not membersof the same family, and Helvetica is far, far more common than Helvetica Neue.
Tangential note, for anyone who was ever confused about the differences, I found a comment here http://fontfeed.com/archives/font-or-typeface/insightful:
The correct hierarchy of typographic terminology, as I learned it, is broken down into the four Fs.
FOUNDRY: The designer and/or manufacturer of sets of type. Berthold Direct Corporation is a type foundry.
FAMILY: Related typefaces from the same foundry. Berthold Garamond is a type family.
FACE: The style of the type (regular, medium, bold, etc.). Berthold Garamond regular is one typeface while Berthold Garamond italic is a different typeface.
FONT: A typeface at a specific size. Berthold Garamond italic, 10 point is one font while Berthold Garamond italic, 12 point is a different font.
Helvetica, and Helvetica Neuehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica#Neue_Helvetica_.281983.29are from different Foundries, and therefor the only terminological-relationship between them is they are both classified as Grotesque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grotesque_%28typeface_classification%29sans-serif type families. :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grotesque_%28typeface_classification%29
On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 12:51 PM, Jared Zimmerman < jared.zimmerman@wikimedia.org> wrote:
We have an action item to change the order from the free fonts that are visually similar to the specified non-free fonts,
? The current vector beta definition in LESS[1] is @content-font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Helvetica", "Nimbus Sans L", "Arial", "Liberation Sans", sans-serif;
This seems right. I repeat, there is no benefit to putting the free names first, unless designers think they look better.
Most popular Linux variants specify an equivalent FOSS font for "Helvetica" that ships with the OS for exactly this scenario, ensuring that users get a decent approximation of the proprietary font's appearance by some FOSS font. A few brave users customize the matching behavior because they prefer something else, or they read some how-to article. If we put the free names first, we just frustrate those efforts, and the experience of 90% of our users doesn't change.
faidon:
it's basically undefined behavior
A font stack is inherently undefined behavior :) Yes we get somewhat unspecified behavior for a small subset of our users, but on balance it's better and more freedom-y to let them evolve a better FOSS version of the notion of "Helvetica" than nailing them to 2012's fallback "Nimbus Sans L".
I don't think* that this will change the experience for user without those
fonts but we'd have to do some testing, it really comes down to if we specify Helvetica Neue, and a particular system thinks that should match a different free font than the one we thought was a best match.
I don't know any free systems that specify "Helvetica Neue" equivalents as well as "Helvetica", I don't know what Android does. (Can people spend less time hypothesizing and more time reporting their /etc/fonts rules and experiences with the Vector typography refresh Beta experiment[2]?)
Quim:
And if we want to specify any fonts in our works, they should be free.
Uh, why? Mac users actually have Helvetica Neue, the nicest-looking font, Windows users have Georgia. The presence of these names in our CSS does nothing to hinder the cause of free fonts. Removing them would be detrimental for most of our users.
The problem with giving up and sticking to
serif, sans-serif, monospace
is designers can't advance the appearance of MediaWiki. We engineers engage in all this scholastic argumentation over font names, meanwhile the Vector typography refresh[2] is a big f***ing improvement to the experience of a billion MW users! I wish we had a video of Vibha Bamba's passionate defense of design from the tech days meeting.
[1] http://git.wikimedia.org/blob/mediawiki%2Fcore.git/HEAD/skins%2Fvector%2Fbet...
[2] http://multimedia-alpha.wmflabs.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-..., soon I hope to be more widely available. -- =S Page Features engineer
On 10/29/2013 06:30 PM, S Page wrote:
This seems right. I repeat, there is no benefit to putting the free names first, unless designers think they look better.
One important benefit is that we encourage use of free fonts, even when both free and proprietary fonts are installed. This fits with our support for free software throughout the movement.
I completely agree we should choose great free fonts that fit our intended design.
Most popular Linux variants specify an equivalent FOSS font for "Helvetica" that ships with the OS for exactly this scenario, ensuring that users get a decent approximation of the proprietary font's appearance by some FOSS font.
For the record (and I think similar to what you said), this may be the case for Helvetica, but not necessarily Helvetica Neue. On my machine, fc-match gives
'Helvetica' => "Nimbus Sans L" "Regular"' 'Helvetica Neue' => "DejaVu Sans" "Book" 'Made-up font name' => "DejaVu Sans" "Book"
Nimbus Sans L is indeed based on Helvetica (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimbus_Sans_L). I think the other two are just last-ditch fallbacks (hence why it's the same for 'Made-up font name').
I set up http://jsfiddle.net/UPBUH/ as a quick testing ground. When I check the Fonts tab of Firefox's Web Console (not Firebug), it shows "Nimbus Sans L Bold system". Used as: "Nimbus Sans L".
I think that means fc is looking through the whole stack and picking Nimbus Sans L as the best match. I think corroborates what you said earlier ("fontconfig will use the first font in the font stack that has a positive match.")
S, can I ask what you see for that fiddle on the same console tab?
A few brave users customize the matching behavior because they prefer something else, or they read some how-to article. If we put the free names first, we just frustrate those efforts, and the experience of 90% of our users doesn't change.
If we put the free font first, we're saying we want to use that free font (because it's a free, and fits our intended design well).
The extremely few users who manually customize their font-matching can still override e.g. what "Nimbus Sans L" points to on their machine.
A font stack is inherently undefined behavior :) Yes we get somewhat unspecified behavior for a small subset of our users, but on balance it's better and more freedom-y to let them evolve a better FOSS version of the notion of "Helvetica" than nailing them to 2012's fallback "Nimbus Sans L".
Who says we have to nail anything down? We can choose Nimbus Sans L initially and then put a similar but better free font first later.
Matt Flaschen
On 2013-10-29 4:07 PM, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
A few brave users customize the matching behavior because they prefer something else, or they read some how-to article. If we put the free names first, we just frustrate those efforts, and the experience of 90% of our users doesn't change.
If we put the free font first, we're saying we want to use that free font (because it's a free, and fits our intended design well).
The extremely few users who manually customize their font-matching can still override e.g. what "Nimbus Sans L" points to on their machine.
You're basically suggesting that users who have customized their browsers/OS to handle the patterns used on the majority of the internet – many who may have done a C&P from a tutorial and actually know nothing about the config itself – re-customize their browser/OS to support one website/organization.
~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://danielfriesen.name/]
On 10/29/2013 07:14 PM, Daniel Friesen wrote:
The extremely few users who manually customize their font-matching can still override e.g. what "Nimbus Sans L" points to on their machine.
You're basically suggesting that users who have customized their browsers/OS to handle the patterns used on the majority of the internet – many who may have done a C&P from a tutorial and actually know nothing about the config itself – re-customize their browser/OS to support one website/organization.
Do you really think a significant number of users have manually customized (even by copy-and-pasting commands) the font-matching on their machine?
I think that is a small minority, much less even than those who customized their browser's serif or sans-serif fonts (itself small in relative terms).
Matt Flaschen
On 10/29/2013 07:14 PM, Daniel Friesen wrote:
The extremely few users who manually customize their font-matching can still override e.g. what "Nimbus Sans L" points to on their machine.
You're basically suggesting that users who have customized their browsers/OS to handle the patterns used on the majority of the internet – many who may have done a C&P from a tutorial and actually know nothing about the config itself – re-customize their browser/OS to support one website/organization.
Do you really think a significant number of users have manually customized (even by copy-and-pasting commands) the font-matching on their machine?
I think that is a small minority, much less even than those who customized their browser's serif or sans-serif fonts (itself small in relative terms).
Matt Flaschen
On 2013-10-29 4:25 PM, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
On 10/29/2013 07:14 PM, Daniel Friesen wrote:
The extremely few users who manually customize their font-matching can still override e.g. what "Nimbus Sans L" points to on their machine.
You're basically suggesting that users who have customized their browsers/OS to handle the patterns used on the majority of the internet – many who may have done a C&P from a tutorial and actually know nothing about the config itself – re-customize their browser/OS to support one website/organization.
Do you really think a significant number of users have manually customized (even by copy-and-pasting commands) the font-matching on their machine?
I think that is a small minority, much less even than those who customized their browser's serif or sans-serif fonts (itself small in relative terms).
Matt Flaschen
I might agree if there were some tangible benefit to breaking things for those few users. But the only rationale so far for practically breaking visual improvements which even a few readers may have done by explicitly naming open fonts is some vague sense of FOSS idealism that dosen't provide a single practical improvement for any reader since it doesn't actually change the fonts used by the default OS config readers use.
It basically harasses FOSS users with local customizations to do something that doesn't provide any benefits for other FOSS users. I see nothing but a net loss.
~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://danielfriesen.name/]
On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 4:07 PM, Matthew Flaschen
I set up http://jsfiddle.net/UPBUH/ as a quick testing ground.
Nice, I tweaked it to make http://jsfiddle.net/UPBUH/7/http://jsfiddle.net/UPBUH/6/, you can see what your browser + O.S. picks for each font name in the font stack.
When I check the Fonts tab of Firefox's Web Console (not Firebug), it
shows "Nimbus Sans L Bold system". Used as: "Nimbus Sans L".
I get the same. FWIW Chromium does something different for me, it's matching Helvetica but not using Nimbus Sans L. something more like Liberation Sans.
we're saying we want to use that free font (because it's a free, and fits our intended design well).
If it's as good or better than Helvetica Neue, I think everyone agrees the free font should come first. Yo, designers...? I think Quim goes further to argue our sans-serif font list should be "Nimbus Sans L", "Liberation Sans", sans-serif I have no idea what that font stack does on Windows/Mac/iOS/Android. It's the last thing in http://jsfiddle.net/UPBUH/7/ , can people report back?
Kaldari: "Nimbus Sans L" is the files n019003l.{afm,pfb,pfm} in http://packages.ubuntu.com/saucy/all/gsfonts/download , the command to extract one file is $ dpkg --fsys-tarfile /path/to/gsfonts_blahblah.deb | tar xOf - ./usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts/n019003l.pfb > /tmp/NimbusSansL.pfb and I sent the files to you on a 3 1/2" floppy ☺
Cheers,
On 10/29/2013 03:30 PM, S Page wrote:
Quim:
And if we want to specify any fonts in our works, they should be free.Uh, why? Mac users actually have Helvetica Neue, the nicest-looking font, Windows users have Georgia. The presence of these names in our CSS does nothing to hinder the cause of free fonts.
Yes, it does hinder the cause of free fonts. We won't help scratching the itch because in practice we will rely on a proprietary solution for our UX work targeting the majority of users. While not forcing anybody to use free fonts, our mockups, tests, reviews, screenshots and what not will all assume the happy coincidence that Helvetica Neue ("the most ubiquitous in advertising copy and logos") and Georgia (Microsoft Corporation) are everywhere.
Now compare with this hypothetical scenario: we actually bet on a set of optional free fonts, because we care about typography as much as we care about freedom. We use them as default in our mockups, tests, reviews, screenshots and what not. We serve them as web fonts, we bundle them in our apps and offline versions, we promote them to the users missing them in their systems. We take note of our own itches and user feedback, and we file bugs and enhancement requests upstream, or send/commission improvements. This way we contribute spreading free typography, just like we contribute spreading other areas of free knowledge, free culture and free software.
Removing them would be detrimental for most of our users.
Detrimental... they would still be able to access all our content and functionality without losing a single readable character, right? A lot less "detrimental" than not serving them conveniently mp3, mpeg, flash, Facebook/Twitter/Google login, and other proprietary options already installed in your average Mac / Windows desktop that we decided not to support.
If the above scenario to improve the MediaWiki/Wikimedia UX by improving free fonts is not exciting, or a priority, then at least we could be neutral and not promote actively any proprietary font either.
On 2013-10-29 4:47 PM, Quim Gil wrote:
On 10/29/2013 03:30 PM, S Page wrote:
Removing them would be detrimental for most of our users.
Detrimental... they would still be able to access all our content and functionality without losing a single readable character, right? A lot less "detrimental" than not serving them conveniently mp3, mpeg, flash, Facebook/Twitter/Google login, and other proprietary options already installed in your average Mac / Windows desktop that we decided not to support.
To be fair I'd like to point out that mp3 and mpeg require WMF to encode and serve freely licensed content in patented formats (which also have some legal issues). Flash requires WMF to author and serve stuff directly in a proprietary format. And Facebook/Twitter/Google login require WMF sites to be connected server-side to and dependent on proprietary 3rd party websites.
Proprietary fonts are copyrighted (dubiously though) not patented. WMF is not serving any 3rd party data that is proprietary or not openly licensed. And the openly licensed content itself is still served in a single open non-proprietary format to everyone. The only place open vs. non-free comes into account is on the reader's own computer. Which is very different from the other situations listed where open vs. non-free is on WMF's end.
~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://danielfriesen.name/]