Hi all,
Somebody from the new Karakalpak Wikipedia wrote me today to ask what
font is used for the Latin text in the labels on Wikipedia logos. The
vast majority (that is, those created by Nohat or myself) use Hoefler.
This is not a free font. I don't have the font on my current system,
and the only ways for the Karakalpak logo designer to obtain the font
would be to pay $200 to obtain it, or download it illegally. Just as
an idea, I looked up average wages in Uzbekistan and found that for
many workers, this is more than they earn in an entire month. The
other common scripts on Wikipedia, Cyrillic and Arabic, also use
non-free fonts: if I recall correctly, Minion is used for Cyrillic,
and I can't remember what we use for Arabic.
I would love to see the community select a suitable free font to
replace the non-free fonts we use in almost all of our logos. (yi.wp
uses a free font for its logo, but I know of no other Wikipedia that
does)
I understand that the current font has become associated with
Wikipedia to a certain extent, but I feel that this is an important
matter of principal and something that we should think about as a way
to support free software and also to allow ALL people with the
requisite expertise and computer access the ability to design a logo
for their own language that uses the same font as any other language.
Mark