Hi,

There was no significant change in Malayalam language support since 2013 in operating systems. Last OS which has incomplete Malayalam support was Windows XP (without any service package), so it is irrelevant. There was no prior notification about this removal. Malayalam webfonts were simply unilaterally removed from Malayalam projects (just like it's deployment). We Malayalam wikimedians like to know the substantial changes in circumstances which lead to removal of Malayalam fonts from ULS. Please also note that so many other languages which are much bigger in number of speakers and well supported in OSs even before Malayalam, are still serving webfonts in ULS (eg: Arabic, Tamil, Kannada etc).

There was occasion when a webfont imposed (maintained upstream by ULS developer) on Malayalam community. User community members were asked consensus for each and every word about this imposed webfont font. Once Wikipedia editing was entirely impaired for weeks by removing typing tool (ULS removed by misreading the bug) after these 'skirmishes'. Users were abused and even humiliated based on their tribe by 'sidekicks' in public mailing lists and forums. As a small community who lost a significant number of users and thus growth, because of the problems in the deployment of webfonts and antipathy, we believe we have the right to know the circumstance/study/reason about this removal.

Related links:

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/rEULS28c0ba6bca63e658160f772cdef141c2b9298... https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T53019 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T51894

The fullfilled request for webfonts as an optional feature asked after community consensus, also broken here.

--- ml:User:Praveenp