Some of the less common languages on Wikipedia use scripts which are not
supported by default on most operating systems. In many cases, these
scripts may be unavailable even to native speakers of that language. The
same applies to mathematical fonts.
For example, the following languages seem to use scripts currently not
supported by the fonts installed by default on a MacBook running MacOS
10.6.7:
bn, bpy, kn, ml, te, am, arc, dv, km, my, si, bug, got, lo, or, as, cu, ti
Other operating systems may have even fewer scripts supported.
However, all of these scripts appear to have Free font support, as shown
by their all being rendered on my Linux box, after having installed a
variety of Free Software fonts that are part of the Debian distribution
[see note below]. As far as I can see, none of these appear to have
significant font-shaping issues, with only the occasional glitch in some
languages such as Oriya.
This means that, on modern browsers with both @font-face and UTF-8
support, we should now be in a position to support all of these scripts,
even if they are not supported by the user's installed fonts, by adding
@font-face declarations for Free Software fonts supporting these
scripts, and hosting these fonts on WMF servers.
In addition, doing this for mathematical fonts would have immediate
utility for all language versions of Wikipedia.
Would anyone be interested in helping support this?
-- Neil
Note: the non-mathematical Debian font packages currently installed on
my Linux box are as follows:
ttf-alee ttf-arabeyes ttf-arhangai ttf-arphic-ukai ttf-bengali-fonts
ttf-bitstream-vera ttf-bpg-georgian-fonts ttf-dejavu ttf-dejavu-core
ttf-dejavu-extra ttf-devanagari-fonts ttf-dustin ttf-dzongkha
ttf-farsiweb ttf-freefont ttf-gentium ttf-gujarati-fonts
ttf-indic-fonts ttf-junicode ttf-kacst ttf-kannada-fonts ttf-khmeros
ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-lao ttf-liberation ttf-malayalam-fonts
ttf-mph-2b-damase ttf-opensymbol ttf-oriya-fonts ttf-paktype
ttf-punjabi-fonts ttf-sazanami-mincho ttf-sil-abyssinica
ttf-sil-charis ttf-sil-doulos ttf-sil-gentium ttf-sil-padauk
ttf-sjfonts ttf-tamil-fonts ttf-telugu-fonts ttf-thai-tlwg
ttf-thryomanes ttf-tmuni ttf-unfonts-core ttf-unifont ttf-uralic