On Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 4:31 PM, Ryan Kaldari <rkaldari(a)wikimedia.org>wrote;wrote:
That's not quite accurate. The new font stack is
based on feedback from
Linux users who preferred that we take advantage of the font-mapping built
into Linux rather than trying to guess arbitrary fonts that may or may not
be installed on their machine.
And ignoring the feedback from users who would rather see free fonts
explicitly supported?
"Helvetica", "Times", etc. are not
non-free
software, they are names of well-established (non-copyrighted) typefaces
Considering that typefaces aren't eligible for copyright in the US,[1]
that's not saying anything.
[1]:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces
We're trying to balance the requirements of the
designers
I've been seeing a trend lately where the "requirements of the designers"
is brought up a lot in response to complaints about proposed changes.
Explanations as to what exactly these requirements usually have to be
repeatedly requested, and reasons why these requirements should override
other requirements are seldom given.
The two exceptions to this are the tops of the stacks:
So it's "Whenever possible, you get these non-free fonts we like. Then we
throw in some supposedly-generic names used by prominent non-free fonts
with the platitude that they're often mapped to free fonts on Linux".
On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 12:07 AM, Ryan Kaldari <rkaldari(a)wikimedia.org>wrote;wrote:
The free font advocates have refused to identify the
fonts that they
want to be considered and why they should be considered other than the
fact that they are free,
"the fact that they are free" specifically is what we want to be considered.
As for specific fonts, my knowledge of fonts extends to "serif",
"sans-serif", and "monospace".
* DejaVu Serif. Conclusion: Widely installed, but
horribly ugly
{{citation needed}}. Sounds like someone's peronsal opinion to me.
I just checked,[2] and it turns out DejaVu Sans is what I've been reading
Wikipedia in all these years. Seems far from "horribly ugly" to me. Nicer
than Arial used in Gmail where "I" and "l" look the same, or the font
that
my system uses as a fallback for Helvetica ("TeX Gyre Heros").
[2]: In Firefox: Tools → Web Developer → Inspector, then choose Fonts in
the box on the right.
> and looks nothing like the style desired by the designers.
And why is this an overriding concern? I could as well state the designers
should desire a different style.
* Nimbus Roman No9 L. Conclusion: Basically a clone of Times. Most Linux
> systems map Times to Nimbus Roman No9 L, so there is no advantage to
> specifying "Nimbus Roman No9 L" rather than "Times" (which also
maps to
> fonts on Windows and Mac).
OTOH, there's no disadvantage to specifying Nimbus Roman No9 L with "Times"
as a fallback for Windows and Mac users.
* Linux Libertine. Conclusion: A well-designed free
font that matches the
look of the Wikipedia wordmark. Unfortunately, it is not installed by
default on any systems (as far as anyone knows)
Why does this matter? If Libertine is a good font, why not use it and fall
back to other choices for people who don't have it?
> * Liberation Sans. Conclusion: Essentially a free substitute for Arial.
> Like Nimbus Roman, there is no advantage to specifying "Liberation Sans"
> instead of "Arial" (which is at the bottom of the sans-serif stack) since
> Linux systems will map to Liberation Sans anyway, while other systems will
> apply Arial.
Again, there's no also disadvantage to specifying Liberation Sans with
"Arial" as a fallback for unfortunate users who only have non-free fonts
distributed with their OS.