On 10/29/2013 06:30 PM, S Page wrote:
This seems right. I repeat, there is no benefit to putting the free names first, unless designers think they look better.
One important benefit is that we encourage use of free fonts, even when both free and proprietary fonts are installed. This fits with our support for free software throughout the movement.
I completely agree we should choose great free fonts that fit our intended design.
Most popular Linux variants specify an equivalent FOSS font for "Helvetica" that ships with the OS for exactly this scenario, ensuring that users get a decent approximation of the proprietary font's appearance by some FOSS font.
For the record (and I think similar to what you said), this may be the case for Helvetica, but not necessarily Helvetica Neue. On my machine, fc-match gives
'Helvetica' => "Nimbus Sans L" "Regular"' 'Helvetica Neue' => "DejaVu Sans" "Book" 'Made-up font name' => "DejaVu Sans" "Book"
Nimbus Sans L is indeed based on Helvetica (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimbus_Sans_L). I think the other two are just last-ditch fallbacks (hence why it's the same for 'Made-up font name').
I set up http://jsfiddle.net/UPBUH/ as a quick testing ground. When I check the Fonts tab of Firefox's Web Console (not Firebug), it shows "Nimbus Sans L Bold system". Used as: "Nimbus Sans L".
I think that means fc is looking through the whole stack and picking Nimbus Sans L as the best match. I think corroborates what you said earlier ("fontconfig will use the first font in the font stack that has a positive match.")
S, can I ask what you see for that fiddle on the same console tab?
A few brave users customize the matching behavior because they prefer something else, or they read some how-to article. If we put the free names first, we just frustrate those efforts, and the experience of 90% of our users doesn't change.
If we put the free font first, we're saying we want to use that free font (because it's a free, and fits our intended design well).
The extremely few users who manually customize their font-matching can still override e.g. what "Nimbus Sans L" points to on their machine.
A font stack is inherently undefined behavior :) Yes we get somewhat unspecified behavior for a small subset of our users, but on balance it's better and more freedom-y to let them evolve a better FOSS version of the notion of "Helvetica" than nailing them to 2012's fallback "Nimbus Sans L".
Who says we have to nail anything down? We can choose Nimbus Sans L initially and then put a similar but better free font first later.
Matt Flaschen
On 2013-10-29 4:07 PM, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
A few brave users customize the matching behavior because they prefer something else, or they read some how-to article. If we put the free names first, we just frustrate those efforts, and the experience of 90% of our users doesn't change.
If we put the free font first, we're saying we want to use that free font (because it's a free, and fits our intended design well).
The extremely few users who manually customize their font-matching can still override e.g. what "Nimbus Sans L" points to on their machine.
You're basically suggesting that users who have customized their browsers/OS to handle the patterns used on the majority of the internet – many who may have done a C&P from a tutorial and actually know nothing about the config itself – re-customize their browser/OS to support one website/organization.
~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://danielfriesen.name/]
On 10/29/2013 07:14 PM, Daniel Friesen wrote:
The extremely few users who manually customize their font-matching can still override e.g. what "Nimbus Sans L" points to on their machine.
You're basically suggesting that users who have customized their browsers/OS to handle the patterns used on the majority of the internet – many who may have done a C&P from a tutorial and actually know nothing about the config itself – re-customize their browser/OS to support one website/organization.
Do you really think a significant number of users have manually customized (even by copy-and-pasting commands) the font-matching on their machine?
I think that is a small minority, much less even than those who customized their browser's serif or sans-serif fonts (itself small in relative terms).
Matt Flaschen
On 2013-10-29 4:25 PM, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
On 10/29/2013 07:14 PM, Daniel Friesen wrote:
The extremely few users who manually customize their font-matching can still override e.g. what "Nimbus Sans L" points to on their machine.
You're basically suggesting that users who have customized their browsers/OS to handle the patterns used on the majority of the internet – many who may have done a C&P from a tutorial and actually know nothing about the config itself – re-customize their browser/OS to support one website/organization.
Do you really think a significant number of users have manually customized (even by copy-and-pasting commands) the font-matching on their machine?
I think that is a small minority, much less even than those who customized their browser's serif or sans-serif fonts (itself small in relative terms).
Matt Flaschen
I might agree if there were some tangible benefit to breaking things for those few users. But the only rationale so far for practically breaking visual improvements which even a few readers may have done by explicitly naming open fonts is some vague sense of FOSS idealism that dosen't provide a single practical improvement for any reader since it doesn't actually change the fonts used by the default OS config readers use.
It basically harasses FOSS users with local customizations to do something that doesn't provide any benefits for other FOSS users. I see nothing but a net loss.
~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://danielfriesen.name/]
On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 4:07 PM, Matthew Flaschen
I set up http://jsfiddle.net/UPBUH/ as a quick testing ground.
Nice, I tweaked it to make http://jsfiddle.net/UPBUH/7/http://jsfiddle.net/UPBUH/6/, you can see what your browser + O.S. picks for each font name in the font stack.
When I check the Fonts tab of Firefox's Web Console (not Firebug), it
shows "Nimbus Sans L Bold system". Used as: "Nimbus Sans L".
I get the same. FWIW Chromium does something different for me, it's matching Helvetica but not using Nimbus Sans L. something more like Liberation Sans.
we're saying we want to use that free font (because it's a free, and fits our intended design well).
If it's as good or better than Helvetica Neue, I think everyone agrees the free font should come first. Yo, designers...? I think Quim goes further to argue our sans-serif font list should be "Nimbus Sans L", "Liberation Sans", sans-serif I have no idea what that font stack does on Windows/Mac/iOS/Android. It's the last thing in http://jsfiddle.net/UPBUH/7/ , can people report back?
Kaldari: "Nimbus Sans L" is the files n019003l.{afm,pfb,pfm} in http://packages.ubuntu.com/saucy/all/gsfonts/download , the command to extract one file is $ dpkg --fsys-tarfile /path/to/gsfonts_blahblah.deb | tar xOf - ./usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts/n019003l.pfb > /tmp/NimbusSansL.pfb and I sent the files to you on a 3 1/2" floppy ☺
Cheers,
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org