On 11/04/14 19:30, Erwin Dokter wrote:
First, I like to aplologize to anyone who I may have
come over too
passionate at some times. Frustration is known to get the better of
me, even though I should control that. (I also quit smoking.)
Not sure where a new font stack should be discussed, so I'm just
throwing it in here. Also, note I propose this for Latin wikis only.
Asuming we want the 'Helvetca' look for the body font:
font-family: "Nimbus Sans L", "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica,
sans-serif;
Breakdown:
Nimbus Sans L - for Linux. This is the defacto helv font on Linux
systems which result in an look similair to Mac/Windows. Windows will
not match this font, as the Windows versions of the Nimbus font
packages have different font family names (ie. 'NimbusSanL' instead of
'Nimbus Sans L').
Helvetica Neue - for Mac. Like Nimbus, this should not match fonts on
Windows (or Linux for that matter), as those copies for Windows have
differen font family names (like 'Helvetica Neue LT Com 55 Roman').
Arial - For Windows. Positioned after Nimbus Sans and Helvetica Neue,
so Mac and Linux do not match Arial, but positioned before Helvetica
to prevent matching an inferiour Helvetica font that may be installed
on some Windows machines.
Helvetica - Generic Helvetica fallback for any system not matching any
of the previous fonts.
But same as the original font stack, the question remains - for
everything but mac, what is this supposed to solve? What is the purpose
of even having helvetica and arial there when they're already the
defaults on their respective systems, and when on other systems they
would likely be far worse than the defaults? And for linux, either
they'll already be using nimbus sans (if they even have it), or it's not
going to be what their renderers are optimised for. Every distro is
different, with its own defaults and optimisations, and they are
optimised based on their defaults. We should not be overriding those
without very good reason.
Only one default has been explained to have legitimate problems (I
believe it was Daniel Friesen who went into this, so thank you) -
helvetica on mac. Given that the fix appears to be a font that will only
be present on macs in the first place, would it not be a better approach
to simply address this and leave the others be?
Thus:
/* Override Helvetica default on macs to improve font legibility */
font-family: "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif;
This way it is clear what's going on in the source, ideologies are left
alone, and everyone gets the best possible experience for their platform.
I'd like to test this locally on the English
Wikipedia, and I am quit
confident this makes everyone happy because 1) every OS should end up
using a native font, and 2) it "promotes" a free font at the beginning
of the stack (not a high priority in my book though).
Next up I may think about the headers font stack; While Georgia is a
good serif; I detest its use of text figures.
Problem with any serifs is that when using them with sans-serifs, the
different fonts need to match each other with similar ratios and
weights; sans-serif, serif, or otherwise, you can't just shove any two
fonts together and call it a day. Linux libertine, for instance, is very
pretty, but its thickness and dimensions simply do not match the body in
helvetica et al; it's much more similar to a bold verdana-style font.
Georgia may have similar problems (I don't have it so I couldn't say at
present), so that might be something to look into there as well.
-I