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