On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 20:53, Erik Moeller
<erik@wikimedia.org> wrote:
So, if I'm understanding the issue correctly, the open source font in
Tamil is inferior to the proprietary font that many users have
installed, correct?
Exactly.
I recall brief discussion about this at the
hackathon, but I don't remember the answer:
The agreed answer was to improve Lohit-Tamil and fix issues before using it on Webfonts instead of getting to develop/use preferences which Tamil community originally suggested. Fixing issues is good in the sense, mediawiki / wikipedians dont just consume opensource, they contribute back, but realistically might take little longer. I am willing to help, just that I need to learn and do things :)
Is it possible to
implement the font delivery in such a way that the superior
proprietary fonts are specified as preferred, and the inferior open
source fonts are specified as fallback, so that users who have the
superior fonts installed will not see any change?
As per Santhosh, "Spying the system" is not possible currently and hence we cant know that there are fonts on the system, leave alone checking if they are superior. I was wondering if this requirement can go into HTML5 if it makes sense / feasible, but thats a long way out.
(NB - as Siebrand noted, the i18n folks are traveling right now, so it
may take a few days to continue this conversation with everyone
involved.)
We shall wait :)