On Sat, Dec 21, 2013 at 4:09 AM, Denis Jacquerye <moyogo(a)gmail.com> wrote: Yes, the problem is that we have two mutually exclusive requirements and no communication between the two opposing camps. On one side, the designers have said that the preferred body font should be Helvetica Neue (or Helvetica) and the header font should be Georgia. On the other side we have some vocal community members and developers who say that the preferred font must be a free font (but they don't say which). So what we end up with is a totally inconsistent experience which defeats the entire purpose of the typography update. I agree that what we really need is a list of font requirements, not a list of fonts. This list should include both aesthetic and technical requirements. For example: *Header Font Requirements:* * Includes all glyphs for Basic Latin (ASCII) and Latin-1 Supplement (0080–00FF) * Includes at least 90% of Latin Extended-A (0100–017F) * Is installed by default on at least 1 common operating system * Easy to read at large and medium text sizes * Non-distracting design (readers should not notice the font) * Traditional serifs (for an "authoritative", encyclopedic look) *Body Font Requirements:* * Includes all glyphs for Basic Latin (ASCII), Latin-1 Supplement (0080–00FF), and Latin Extended-A (0100–017F) * Includes at least 90% of Latin Extended-B (0180–024F) and IPA Extensions (0250–02AF) * Is installed by default on at least 1 common operating system * Renders common ligatures correctly (many fonts do not) * Easy to read at medium, small, and very small text sizes (tall x-height) * Non-distracting design (readers should not notice the font) * Sans-serif * Uses most common variants of variable Latin letters, for example, two story lower-case "a" and single-story lower-case "g" These are just some examples of course. If we had such a list of requirements, we could hopefully use it to construct a font-stack that is consistent and that everyone (or at least more than one person) agrees on :) Ryan Kaldari

On 12/23/2013 06:06 PM, Jon Robson wrote: To be precise, what brought us into this discussion was the idea of committing to certain proprietary fonts. The vocal community members are saying that Wikimedia / MediaWiki shouldn't be pointing to any proprietary product when there are free alternatives available. We just ask the designers to stick to the same principles of free knowledge and free software everybody else is following. This is why this "side" has no strong opinion on specific fonts. We agree that defining fonts is a task for designers, but still a task to be performed under the same Wikimedia principles. The recurrent argument from the pro-proprietary-fonts side is that no free font is as good and has the wide install base. Following this argument we would have never started a free encyclopedia from scratch, because in 2001 anybody with a computer would most likely have access to better proprietary encyclopedias with wide distribution. But no, someone had a vision of a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and now we have an amazing product. Following the same principle and the same bet we should go for free fonts that anyone can edit. Fonts that luckily we can choose (and eventually improve) without needing to create them from scratch. We should do this despite the short term inconveniences, aiming for the long term goal of a World with amazing free fonts for everybody, perfectly suitable for our amazing projects. This is the first part of the discussion. If we don't agree on the points above then we will probably keep arguing about the points below. If we agree on the points above then we have basically two strong choices to reach consensus: 1. Choose the free fonts we want to commit to, seeing these fonts not only as design objects but also as living open source projects we could promote and get involved with. We should considering the translations these free fonts have in systems missing them, but not being determined by them. 2. Don't commit to any font. Point to serif / sans and let the browsers do the rest. According to the discussion so far, there is a possible third choice (a weak one) to find a compromise, choosing some free and non-free fonts. I consider this argument weak because I believe it is originated by a lack of consensus in the points above about the free knowledge mission and its relation with font choices. PS: if you really need a starting point for the selection of free fonts, two typefaces that the Wikimedia community has already selected in the past are Linux Libertine and Gill Sans -- https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Visual_identity_guidelines -- Quim Gil Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil

On 25/12/13 06:59, Quim Gil wrote: I hope it will be considered useful. Those were good points to make.