On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 12:55 AM, Isarra Yos <zhorishna(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 13/04/14 14:12, Martijn Hoekstra wrote:
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.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh/Font_choice/Test tells
me
Linux now often gets DejaVu as default sans, and I understand we would
rather force Nimbus if it is available as it is deemed better. Also, free
font up front.
--Martijn
Deemed better? Better how?
According to
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh/Font_choice#Body_font_eva…
sans scores 0 out of 10 points for "readability,
neutrality, and "authority" (does the font look like it conveys reliable
information)." Apparently the font is not readable, neutral or authoritive
at all, and completely unsuitable for the website. If it is in fact almost
completely unreadable it seems reasonable to override it, even if it is the
system default, but I have the feeling that there may be some hyperbole in
that table. That said, with
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61470 it seems a terrible
idea to have Helvetica Neue in the font stack.
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...
-I
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