On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 4:02 PM, Bala Jeyaraman <sodabottle(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Agree with Srikanth on WebFonts. We at the Tamil Wiki
projects have already
tried the webfonts out and found the Lohit Tamil - the font available via
webFonts extension has serious readability/rendering issues in most
operating systems (most except Redhat Linux). It is a big step backwards in
usability for those who have better system fonts (which in Tamil is like
85-90% of the reading public).
So, if I'm understanding the issue correctly, the open source font in
Tamil is inferior to the proprietary font that many users have
installed, correct? I recall brief discussion about this at the
hackathon, but I don't remember the answer: Is it possible to
implement the font delivery in such a way that the superior
proprietary fonts are specified as preferred, and the inferior open
source fonts are specified as fallback, so that users who have the
superior fonts installed will not see any change? If so, is there a
reason not to resolve the issue that way until we have better open
source fonts?
(NB - as Siebrand noted, the i18n folks are traveling right now, so it
may take a few days to continue this conversation with everyone
involved.)
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate