On Thursday, April 10, 2014, MZMcBride <z@mzmcbride.comjavascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','z@mzmcbride.com');> wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 7:39 AM, Derk-Jan Hartman d.j.hartman+wmf_ml@gmail.com wrote:
So for me, the question is not how can we apply pretty serif fonts to headers, the question is what can we do short term and long term to make that happen.
It would be good if we could focus the conversation as much on concrete bugs and issues as possible.
You mean something like this?
Derk-Jan Hartman wrote:
Short term:
- Accept that the current solution is not working
- Rely on Operating System to make the best choice it can, because we
cannot do better (return to status quo)
- Accept that maybe it might just not be possible right now
- Gather statistics on cleartype font rendering (just like we look at
tofu).
- See if there are ways to make the target group to which the font
change is applied narrower/stricter/better defined.
How are these specific, replicable bugs? DJ is saying things the current solution is "not working" and we "cannot do better" but there is no evidence about why this is the case for such a large number of users that it requires a revert back to plain sans-serif.
People are talking in generalities and about problems related to areas like non-Latin script support, but not referring to bugs filed and which would be fixed by the suggested patch.
Meanwhile, in this thread and in the documentation on mediawiki.org, we have been extremely specific about how each aspect of the new typography (including the body fonts specified) is a pragmatic improvement for users, and what we lose by reverting that part. I also posted links to that effect on the patch.
The patch as it stands does not refer to an unresolved bug or enhancement. It also explicitly refers to the issue as an ideological one about promoting non-free fonts in our code, even though Jon already wrote a FIXME acknowledging this.
Unless you can raise issues that cause actual functional problems that outweigh the benefits of the new body font stack, I don't think merging that patch is required to improve things for readers and editors, and is worth the churn in the user experience for millions of readers and editors.
Steven
I agree with all of this. Both Erik's and Derk-Jan's posts are very good, but I get the feeling that people are talking past each other in this thread sometimes.
As Quim notes, there's an upcoming MediaWiki release. We should merge https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/124475 into master and figure out what to do with the other font-family adjustments for the short-term.
There seems to be demonstrable consensus for merging Gerrit change 124475 into master, though Steven refuses to remove his -2, which he should never have been able to set. If you (Erik) are truly interested in focusing the conversation on concrete bugs and issues, that's where I would start.
MZMcBride
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