On 15/04/14 01:54, Steven Walling wrote:
On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 3:55 PM, Isarra Yos zhorishna@gmail.com wrote:
Deemed better? Better how? But that's what I'm saying - if the configuration is optimised for dejavu sans, nimbus won't be better at all even if it is a better-engineered font (doubtful, though, it being an arial clone from what I understand). Letters will be too close together, sizes and hinting will be off, and that's not even going into the whole rabbit hole of messing with what people are used to, which seems to be the single biggest determining factor as to what they find easy to read once the basics are covered...
Design involves making choices on the behalf of users. What color should these buttons be? Where should this text go? We can't design for every person's individual taste. We have to design for what we think will do the most functional good for the most people. This is why the vast majority of sites a user will visit on a regular basis do not simply leave typography up to the browser defaults. Even MediaWiki, by choosing "sans-serif" for many years, forced users who might want everything to be serif to not get that.
Just because something is common doesn't mean it's a good idea. It may well be. But it may also just be something someone did that everyone else decided to copy, rather like big hair and leg warmers.
Don't get me wrong, big hair can be awesome, but the maintenance, man, that's just killer. Looks ain't everything, and at some point you wind up just wanting your hair back.
To be honest Isarra, the number of emails and on-wiki comments you have written with this exact same question is kind of mindblowing. You ask it every time the subject comes up, regardless of which particular font stack is under discussion or who is talking about it. No amount of detailed explanation ever seems enough for you.
On Wikitech-l, Design-l, and in the extensive documentation on mediawiki.org, people have laid out highly objective rationales for why each font and the associated type sizing, spacing, leading, and more were selected to be harmonious with each other. If your objection is not to the particular choices made, but to the fact that we're making specific design choices at all, I don't really think there's much point in talking about it more.
Steven
So what is the explanation, then? What was so wrong with the defaults? Do you have any links?
-I