Erwin, I echo Erik's statement. Thanks for moving this along. In response to your suggestion that we need a font stack specific to the language I have compiled this patch [1]
I envision this change should enable various other possibilities in styling our content better for other languages, starting initially with font families. As stated, I think this is a really good opportunity to talk with local communities and do an audit of the best fonts per language.
The stack you suggested makes total sense to me and I've included it in that patch. We can debate it some more however and if necessary I can remove the change from the patchset - I just wanted to explain how it might work via code!
Jon [1] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/125760
On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 7:12 AM, Martijn Hoekstra martijnhoekstra@gmail.com wrote:
On Apr 12, 2014 8:58 AM, "Isarra Yos" zhorishna@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/04/14 19:30, Erwin Dokter wrote:
First, I like to aplologize to anyone who I may have come over too
passionate at some times. Frustration is known to get the better of me, even though I should control that. (I also quit smoking.)
Not sure where a new font stack should be discussed, so I'm just
throwing it in here. Also, note I propose this for Latin wikis only.
Asuming we want the 'Helvetca' look for the body font:
font-family: "Nimbus Sans L", "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica,
sans-serif;
Breakdown:
Nimbus Sans L - for Linux. This is the defacto helv font on Linux
systems which result in an look similair to Mac/Windows. Windows will not match this font, as the Windows versions of the Nimbus font packages have different font family names (ie. 'NimbusSanL' instead of 'Nimbus Sans L').
Helvetica Neue - for Mac. Like Nimbus, this should not match fonts on
Windows (or Linux for that matter), as those copies for Windows have differen font family names (like 'Helvetica Neue LT Com 55 Roman').
Arial - For Windows. Positioned after Nimbus Sans and Helvetica Neue, so
Mac and Linux do not match Arial, but positioned before Helvetica to prevent matching an inferiour Helvetica font that may be installed on some Windows machines.
Helvetica - Generic Helvetica fallback for any system not matching any
of the previous fonts.
But same as the original font stack, the question remains - for
everything but mac, what is this supposed to solve? What is the purpose of even having helvetica and arial there when they're already the defaults on their respective systems, and when on other systems they would likely be far worse than the defaults? And for linux, either they'll already be using nimbus sans (if they even have it), or it's not going to be what their renderers are optimised for.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh/Font_choice/Test tells me Linux now often gets DejaVu as default sans, and I understand we would rather force Nimbus if it is available as it is deemed better. Also, free font up front.
--Martijn
Every distro is different, with its own defaults and optimisations, and they are optimised based on their defaults. We should not be overriding those without very good reason.
Only one default has been explained to have legitimate problems (I
believe it was Daniel Friesen who went into this, so thank you) - helvetica on mac. Given that the fix appears to be a font that will only be present on macs in the first place, would it not be a better approach to simply address this and leave the others be?
Thus:
/* Override Helvetica default on macs to improve font legibility */ font-family: "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif;
This way it is clear what's going on in the source, ideologies are left
alone, and everyone gets the best possible experience for their platform.
I'd like to test this locally on the English Wikipedia, and I am quit
confident this makes everyone happy because 1) every OS should end up using a native font, and 2) it "promotes" a free font at the beginning of the stack (not a high priority in my book though).
Next up I may think about the headers font stack; While Georgia is a
good serif; I detest its use of text figures.
Problem with any serifs is that when using them with sans-serifs, the
different fonts need to match each other with similar ratios and weights; sans-serif, serif, or otherwise, you can't just shove any two fonts together and call it a day. Linux libertine, for instance, is very pretty, but its thickness and dimensions simply do not match the body in helvetica et al; it's much more similar to a bold verdana-style font. Georgia may have similar problems (I don't have it so I couldn't say at present), so that might be something to look into there as well.
-I
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