On Thursday, April 10, 2014, MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 7:39 AM, Derk-Jan Hartman
<d.j.hartman+wmf_ml(a)gmail.com> wrote:
So for me, the question is not how can we apply
pretty serif fonts to
headers, the question is what can we do short term and long term to
make that happen.
It would be good if we could focus the conversation as much on
concrete bugs and issues as possible.
You mean something like this?
Derk-Jan Hartman wrote:
Short term:
* Accept that the current solution is not working
* Rely on Operating System to make the best choice it can, because we
cannot do better (return to status quo)
* Accept that maybe it might just not be possible right now
* Gather statistics on cleartype font rendering (just like we look at
tofu).
* See if there are ways to make the target group to which the font
change is applied narrower/stricter/better defined.
How are these specific, replicable bugs? DJ is saying things the current
solution is "not working" and we "cannot do better" but there is no
evidence about why this is the case for such a large number of users that
it requires a revert back to plain sans-serif.
People are talking in generalities and about problems related to areas like
non-Latin script support, but not referring to bugs filed and which would
be fixed by the suggested patch. Brian's recent comment here is an example
of what we are asking to hear, though I don't think that requires a full
revert.
Meanwhile, in this thread and in the documentation on
mediawiki.org, we
have been extremely specific about how each aspect of the new typography
(including the body fonts specified) is a pragmatic improvement for users,
and what we lose by reverting. I also posted links to that effect on the
patch.
The patch as it stands does not refer to an unresolved bug or enhancement.
It also explicitly refers to the issue as an ideological one about
potentially promoting non-free fonts in our code, even though Jon already
out a FIXME acknowledging this.
Unless you can raise issues that cause actual functional problems that
outweigh the benefits of the new body font stack, I don't think merging
that patch is required to improve things and is worth the churn in user
experience for millions of readers.
Steven
I agree with all of this. Both Erik's and Derk-Jan's posts are very
good, but I get the feeling that people are talking past each other in
this thread sometimes.
As Quim notes, there's an upcoming MediaWiki release. We should merge
<https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/124475> into master and figure out what to
do with the other font-family adjustments for the short-term.
There seems to be demonstrable consensus for merging Gerrit change 124475
into master, though Steven refuses to remove his -2, which he should never
have been able to set. If you (Erik) are truly interested in focusing the
conversation on concrete bugs and issues, that's where I would start.
MZMcBride
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