I don't really have the energy to keep having this conversation, I
appreciate that everyone has taken the time to weigh in on this whatever
you opinion is on the matter.
From Issara...
* Windows users got fonts
optimised for Windows, and which Windows
knows well how to render. They may not be free, but /we/ weren't the
ones prioritising the non-free.
* Linux users got whatever (probably free) font their distribution
provides, for which in all likelihood their fontconfig (rendering
settings) is also optimised.
* Those with cleartype etc off previously had fonts that rendered
properly or they would not have been using their system with
cleartype etc off for all this time.
* Anyone previously using free fonts, on whatever platform, did not
have their choices overridden. This also applies to those using
dyslexic-friendly and other accessibility-oriented fonts.
From S Page
* Mac users get Helvetica Neue
* Windows users get Arial unless they have Helvetica Neue (unlikely) or
Helvetica (I can't reproduce bug 63662)
* Linux users get whatever F/OSS font fontconfig supplies for the
well-known string "Helvetica", I get Nimbus Sans L
With the changes from Jon's patch removing Arimo and Liberation Sans, the
current font stack renders very closely to what it was originally for
Windows, and is improved for Mac and Linux users. For anyone on any
platform who has made the decision to have helvetica on their machine they
get an experience which is more consistent across devices, and platforms.
We said from day one that their might be some issues for a few non-latin
scripts, and we've reached out to the admins of those sites to help them
make small tweaks, as of jon's patch no one has provided us with any
screenshots which highlight the issues that have been mentioned from this
thread, I would welcome those screenshots as well as comments from users
fluent in the languages to comment on the matter.
I understand if you "don't like it" there are a lot of things I don't
like
too. Sadly that is a fact of life. Sometimes we don't like thing, sometimes
we have to learn to get used to things when they change. The thing that
confuses me, is that someone would go so far as to try to prohibit others
from doing their job based on their subjective opinion. Do product and
design people go and -2 developers patches when they don't agree on the
choices they've made? They do not. Do you know why? Its because we trust
them to make good decision based on the acceptance of their knowledge of
their domain. Why is Design different? Why does everyone think they have
equal say when it comes to aesthetic choices, its a good question, one I
don't think I'll try to answer here, but I think the gist of it is that
everyone has opinions, everyone says "I could have done that" whether they
could or not, whether they did or not.
We try as much as we can, with our limited time, and limited resources to
validate our decisions in a measurable way. Sometimes this isn't possible,
sometimes things are immeasurable. Does this mean that we shouldn't do
them? No, it does not.
The question was asked, why do we spend so much time on this when there are
other pressing matters to attend to. The answer is simple, because of this
process, this discourse where every decision is questioned, because a
process that should take a month takes six. I honestly want to move on to
tackle other problems, but if everything that my team or the product teams
work on comes up for a vote, it questioned to this degree, nothing will
happen, nothing will improve.
I'm tired of fighting over this, I'd like to move on, and moving on does
not mean going on to the status quo.
*Jared Zimmerman * \\ Director of User Experience \\ Wikimedia Foundation
M : +1 415 609 4043 | : @JaredZimmerman<https://twitter.com/JaredZimmerman>
On Tue, Apr 8, 2014 at 8:10 AM, Isarra Yos <zhorishna(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 08/04/14 06:57, S Page wrote:
In
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/124475/ (go
back to sans-serif)
Legoktm claims "There was a consensus that listing only non-free fonts was
not acceptable", that's not my recollection. Was a bug ever filed?
Kaldari valiantly tried to put non-free fonts first, that caused bug
63512. Now as I understand it, we're back to:
* Mac users get Helvetica Neue
* Windows users get Arial unless they have Helvetica Neue (unlikely) or
Helvetica (I can't reproduce bug 63662)
* Linux users get whatever F/OSS font fontconfig supplies for the
well-known string "Helvetica", I get Nimbus Sans L
* Android users ?? (Nobody responded.)
Linux often gets arial. Anyone with wine will probably have it installed,
too, and most will have wine even if they don't use it. It's not
necessarily a particularly good copy, either.
quoting Isarra Yos
Given that no objective and verifiable issues with this were ever
provided
... Why? All this effort, and for what?
BECAUSE DESIGN. (I begged and pleaded with the talented designers who
work
next to me to put something emphatic in the Typography refresh FAQ.) It's
a
better design. It makes MediaWiki web sites look better for millions of
our
users by mentioning proprietary fonts that 90+% of them have. That's not
"objective and verifiable", it just is. Is it worth mentioning non-free
fonts? People disagree. But I'm saddened by the implicit and overt
hostility towards the art of design here ("its debatable whether this
actually represents "progress"", "it seems like things have shifted
more
to
managers at WMF make the decisions", etc.).
Saying something is 'better' doesn't make it so. There are real reasons
behind why anything is better than something else, or it would not be
better. Even art in general is not purely subjective; if it were, we
wouldn't hire artists and designers at all because it would be just as
subjective to them and everyone would have different views and it'd just be
hopeless.
Good design is good because it plays to the way our brains work. Even
without a background in neuroscience, artists and designers learn over time
what works and why, and they often take classes to enumerate the concepts
as well. These are concepts they should be referring to here, things about
the composition, the contrast, the use of space, the interplay between the
colours. You can't just say this painting did this 'because design' and
expect anyone to take you seriously. You can, however, say that the added
negative space helps to emphasise the subject, drawing attention away from
that place in the background where someone punched a hole through the
canvas. They may still not take you seriously because then they know you
punched a hole in the canvas, but it's a real, understandable reason.
But there's more that needs to go into something like this beyond just the
general principles of design - this isn't a painting, but a thing that
people use. So what of the users themselves? What of the languages that it
will be in, the disabilities that need to be accommodated, the hardware on
which it will be displayed, the software that will be rendering it to the
end user, and the principles we uphold? How is it better in these respects,
and for these?
'Just is' doesn't fly. There is so much more to design than that, and to
suggest otherwise discredits those who make it their passion.
-I
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