On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 2:59 PM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski tomasz@twkozlowski.netwrote:
You are responding to the bug based on reports that come from outside the Wikimedia universe -- and to say otherwise is untrue and absurd in itself.
You saw the feedback, Steven, with your own eyes, in January of this year: it was submitted by Wikipedian Patrick87 on January 8 at < https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Typography_refresh/Archive_2#Default_sys
tem_fonts_should_be_given_preference_over_free_fonts_.28especially_on_Windows .29>.
You had almost three full months to deal with the problem, and yet you are only responding to it when people pointed it out to you on Twitter, Reddit, Quora, and wherever else.
/If/ you value feedback from Wikipedians, why don't you act on it?
Tomasz,
We should be having this conversation in Bugzilla. I replied to this issue at https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63512#c29
TL;DR: one user saying they chose to download the fonts in question is not the same thing as a report that a significant minority might have them.
On the general point: you and others seem to be simultaneously angry that we tried a version without a freely-licensed font *and* that we have tried versions which did have FOSS fonts, but that had unexpected bugs for some Windows users. Which is it? Or is that you're just looking for an excuse to be mad and cause a fuss because we changed the typography at all? It sounds to me like it's the latter.
New software updates that reach this widely always have issues that come up for unexpected edge cases. The preexisting defaults have been around a long time, and gone through much bug fixing and tweaking based on user feedback across wikis. The same will be necessary for the new typography as well.
Steven