On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 7:19 PM, Steven Walling swalling@wikimedia.org wrote:
We basically tried the equivalent of this (placing relatively free fonts unknown on most platforms first) which Kaldari talked about previously. Ultimately that kind of declaration is useless for the vast majority of users and we got very specific negative feedback about it on the Talk page.
(..)
These fonts are ignored by most systems when placed first or when placed later in the stack. Systems match the first font they recognize, so using something they don't recognize or putting it later is a largely just feel-good measure.
Thanks Steven et al. It's clear from https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/108155/ that everyone involved is trying to do the right thing. :)
I agree with Rob's follow-up question here --
https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Typography_refresh&diff...
i.e. we should document our assessment of freely licensed fonts and any associated design or rendering issues. Even if specifying alternative fonts in the stack _is_ largely symbolic, to the extent that we can express our values through our choices here without negative side effects, we should.
Erik