[Wikipedia-l] Distributing fonts

[James R. Johnson]

Maybe if the wikipedia were to offer the fonts necessary for the wikipedia
to display properly, then that would solve the problem.  That would be much
easier, especially on certain files (Gothic language) that require a font,
but each time I downloaded that font, it crashed my system.  With the wiki
community, I'd more likely trust the resulting stored font to not crash my
computer.  But becoming a font repository is beside the point of the wiki.

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Pablo Saratxaga
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2004 11:37 PM
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Distributing fonts

Kaixo!

On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 10:30:51PM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:

> If we have a free TTF file to download from the web somewhere, link's 
> fine. If not, I see no reason *not* to upload and offer one. Sure 
> haven't heard one in the previous postings.

Ah, that is quite a different thing.

However, it would still be better to put it somewhere else (along other
fonts for example; that would reach more people)

> Come on, where's the problem? We're offering 4-5 *GB* with pictures to 
> download for en already. And you say we're not equipped to serve a 
> single TTF file?

I had read it as if the idea was to frentically upload all kind of fonts
available.
Indeed one font is not very much; but the real point is that it is not
the right place.
The images are big, but they illustrate the articles; they are part of
the information in the articles.

A font, I don't see how it could be a part of the article (a font file
cannot be directly usable from the web pages; it has to be downloaded
and installed first; that is different to images, sound and video that
can be directly seen/heard).

A font file could be a part of the article of an article about
typography or computer typography; but as it won't be directly usable
from the web browser, probably it would be useless anyway.

Another thing would be a font like a tool to create the infrastructure
(eg, to standardize on the typography of the logos etc); such
font-as-a-tool could indeed have its place in meta:



-- 
Ki ça vos våye bén,
Pablo Saratxaga

http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/		PGP Key available, key ID:
0xD9B85466
[you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or
Esperanto]
[min povas skribi en valona, esperanta, angla aux latinidaj lingvoj]