On Mon, Apr 7, 2014 at 1:19 PM, Jon Robson <jrobson(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
1) Picking a new open font that is either
** widely available on Linux but not so much on Windows
** renders well in Windows
Coming back to the above option...
Today we spent some time testing a stack that puts Nimbus Sans L first,
before Helvetica Neue. This is the font that currently most Linux users
(we've tested on Ubuntu and Debian) are getting via matching to Helvetica
regular. The thing we tested for primarily is how this font renders on
Windows, for the users who may have it. So far it unfortunately appears
that for Windows users with ClearType turned off, Nimbus Sans also suffers
from bug 63512, like Liberation Sans does. (Screengrab from a Windows 7
machine I have for testing:
http://i.imgur.com/pAHTu1f.png).
I would like to keep trying to find a freely-licensed font that A) matches
the other neutral sans-serifs that we have specified and B) which we feel
comfortable putting first in the stack, meaning that it renders well on
Windows, Linux, and Mac on major browsers. So far we are still coming up
short.
[I am copying the above to the Talk page on
mediawiki.org in case anyone
else is interested.]