On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 9:47 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu wrote:
Even more helpful: MediaWiki could determine if a page uses a rare character upon save and link to appropriate fonts.
The problem with this is that it means the characters may be displayed in a different font even if the default font actually contains them, which is needlessly ugly. We can't say "Use this font, but only if the font that would otherwise be used doesn't contain character X". It's an okay tradeoff for languages where very few computers can read them otherwise by default, but it needs to be used with care.
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 9:42 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Do you agree with me that a font is superior when it has a better coverage?
The user should be able to use whatever font they like. Wikipedia currently does not specify a default font; the user's default is used. This will often be the default system sans-serif font, which will blend in nicely. Forcing a different font should only be done with excellent reason (such as if text would otherwise show up as gibberish on nearly all computers).