On 6 April 2014 17:52, Tomasz W. Kozlowski <tomasz(a)twkozlowski.net> wrote: I originally went "what on earth" too, then I went to the bug and looked at the samples. Here's how the previous font stack rendered in Chrome on Windows without Cleartype on: http://i.imgur.com/9QD1ujH.png That's ... pretty broken. - d.

On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 12:11 PM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: Yes. For the record: Jon talked to one person via Twitter, which is why Tomasz is complaining about. We also got a *much* larger and more detailed stream of complaints via on-wiki discussion forums, and other sites like Reddit where users are discussing the change. Hence the report in Bugzilla. The idea that we're just responding to the bug based on one report via Twitter is untrue and absurd. Steven

On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 2:59 PM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski <tomasz(a)twkozlowski.net>wrote;wrote: 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

Steven Walling writes: to sounds You are clueless, kind sir, so let me get some things straight. 1. I am deeply uncomfortable with the fact that you are choosing un-free fonts over free ones. 2. I am deeply uncomfortable with the fact that you decided not to respect the consensus /not/ to choose non-free fonts — such as Arial and Helvetica — over free fonts; a discussion which I only read, but which, as far as I remember, saw participation from yourself, Quim, Greg, and some other people. As for your suggestion that I'm only looking to make a fuss, here's some basic facts for you to ponder. A. /I/ pointed it out to Greg and to you on IRC that deploying Typography Refresh to all wikis on the same day (March 28) was a bad idea, and that it would be better to roll it out with MediaWiki 1.23wmf21, as it would give time to inform the community (as well as to push some last-minute fixes). B. /I/ was the one who added information about Typography Refresh to the last two issues of Tech News, therefore delivering information about it to almost 250 individual subscribers and several community pages & village pumps. Now, don't you think that if I wanted to make a fuss about the change: I. I would have supported your plan to deploy it to all wikis at the same time, so as to ensure maximum community drama, chaos and anger; II. I would have kept the community in the dark, to ensure even more drama & vitriol coming your way? I'm used to you suggesting that I fabricate stuff, so if you want to think that I'm part of some bad faith conspiracy to mean you harm in this case, then that's fine; just keep in mind that other people might not be as welcoming. Tomasz

On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 4:05 PM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski <tomasz(a)twkozlowski.net>wrote;wrote: 1. I am deeply uncomfortable with the fact that you are choosing un-free We've tried the alternative and it's untenable according to the feedback we're getting. I wish it wasn't. I'd rather put free fonts first in the stack, if they actually work for users. Twice now we've tried putting different freely-licensed fonts first. Both times, Windows users who had them have told us they either merely disliked them or they have caused unacceptably poor rendering, particularly for those without font smoothing. There simply is not widely-available font that meets all our needs while also being freely-licensed. The compromise is either to deliver a freely-licensed webfont to all users (which we're not going to do right now, though it's the ideal IMO) or to specify the best fonts users already have on their system free or not, which accomplish the consistency and legibility we're looking for. This is just the reality. Whether or not the CSS/LESS declares them explicitly or not, non-free fonts are what most users have already and want to use, because they actually work. This is true whether we set a more specific stack than "sans-serif" or not. Delaying release to anticipate bugs that have not yet been reported by anyone makes no sense. At the time of release there were only four bugs open related to VectorBeta as an extension, none of which could have told us about the issue. How could last minute fixes be pushed for a bug no one had actually reported yet?

On 7 April 2014 00:16, Brian Wolff <bawolff(a)gmail.com> wrote: This was in response to "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." - d.

On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 4:24 PM, wctaiwan <wctaiwan+lists(a)gmail.com> wrote: I too was surprised at how many users are A) on XP with ClearType off, which is the default there or B) turn font smoothing off intentionally. I should note that by fixing this bug we won't be changing the appearance for users on most platforms, except those on Windows who have these two fonts (Arimo, Liberation Sans), so we're not degrading the quality of font rendering just to optimize for those without smoothing.

Am 07.04.2014 01:20 schrieb "Steven Walling" <steven.walling(a)gmail.com>om>: respect Helvetica smoothing. Typography that it give fixes). Steven, given there was a Font stack which worked fine for years, i am a little puzzled how you can break it and then argue using non free fonts is a solution listening to people on twitter telling you it is broken now. instead of reverting the change, or fix it properly? I mean, windows xp is not new. And turning off clear type is common. I do it first because the Microsoft standard fonts look dizzy with small font sizes on windows7. Rupert