Hey all,
I wanted to give people an extra notice that we're updating the default typography across all Wikimedia sites, for users of the Vector skin. This was also mentioned in the last Tech News edition, and announced by Greg as part of the deployment roadmap.
This will happen in the following order:
1. Test wikis and mediawiki.org tomorrow. That's Thursday, March 27th. 2. Non-Wikipedia projects on Tuesday, April 11th. 3. All Wikipedias on Thursday April 3rd.
If people have questions, there is a summary of the changes and an extensive FAQ at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh. There will also be a post at blog.wikimedia.org tomorrow morning, and we have other messages to go out on-wiki.
Wikitech-l subscribers: you may remember an extensive recent thread that mostly debated the use of non-free fonts like Helvetica Neue and Georgia as the primary fonts in the new font-family settings. We took this feedback to heart. Thanks to patches/testing led by Ryan Kaldari and Vibha Bamba, we released a new version a couple weeks ago, which puts a set of fine FOSS fonts first (say that ten times fast). For the curious, the relevant patch is gerrit 120978.
On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 6:12 PM, Steven Walling swalling@wikimedia.orgwrote:
This will happen in the following order:
- Test wikis and mediawiki.org tomorrow. That's Thursday, March 27th.
- Non-Wikipedia projects on Tuesday, April 11th.
- All Wikipedias on Thursday April 3rd.
Sorry, stupid typo. That's Tuesday, April 1st.
The summary says "in core", but I note there is still no answer to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Typography_refresh#Wikipedia_or_MediaWiki.3F. The FAQ says the change was designed for Wikimedia sites, hints it may actually happen for everyone and doesn't explain how non-Wikimedia users' needs were considered. I also don't see a notification to mediawiki-l. Until clarified I can only assume this will be a Wikimedia-only change, presumably via configuration setting(s).
Nemo
My reading of https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/120978/3/skins/vector/variables.lessindic... that this was merged to the master branch of mediawiki, and so will apply to everyone using the vector skin in the next mediawiki release. --scott
On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 7:01 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.comwrote:
The summary says "in core", but I note there is still no answer to < https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Typography_refresh# Wikipedia_or_MediaWiki.3F>. The FAQ says the change was designed for Wikimedia sites, hints it may actually happen for everyone and doesn't explain how non-Wikimedia users' needs were considered. I also don't see a notification to mediawiki-l. Until clarified I can only assume this will be a Wikimedia-only change, presumably via configuration setting(s).
Nemo
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On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 8:09 AM, C. Scott Ananian cananian@wikimedia.orgwrote:
My reading of
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/120978/3/skins/vector/variables.lessindic... that this was merged to the master branch of mediawiki, and so will apply to everyone using the vector skin in the next mediawiki release.
Scott is correct.
This was designed primarily with Wikimedia readers in mind, but this is extremely minimal stylistically. The typography has no loud personality that is so unique to Wikimedia sites that it that prevents or discourages use by someone say, installing a new MediaWiki instance. In the past, we've discussed the idea of providing either a specific Wikimedia skin or a general MediaWiki skin we don't use at WMF. The discussion about that is at https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51912
On 27 March 2014 17:20, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
This was designed primarily with Wikimedia readers in mind, but this is extremely minimal stylistically. The typography has no loud personality that is so unique to Wikimedia sites that it that prevents or discourages use by someone say, installing a new MediaWiki instance. In the past, we've discussed the idea of providing either a specific Wikimedia skin or a general MediaWiki skin we don't use at WMF. The discussion about that is at https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51912
Speaking as a tarball user, I'd rather the stuff I use have WMF interested in its maintenance :-) Stuff that isn't tends to bitrot.
Making Vector more easily skinnable would help A LOT, fwiw. If we want the various WMF sites to maintain distinctness from third-party installations, best way would be to make it really easy to do so. Heck, some third-party sites get really eyegougingly horrible already ...
- d.
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