Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
I heard the Tamil font story. Can we try and get some official person
to send out a request to font vendors?
On 12/20/11, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 07:33, Subhashish Panigrahi
psubhash...@gmail.comwrote:
Hi All,
While testing both Lohit and Utkal has hinting problems in or wp, is that
possible to keep them optional? As of now automatically the default font
changes to Lohit when you open or wp, instead of that is that possible to
make it optional which someone can choose the dropdown?
Welcome to the world finally! Go read the bug[1] for a start. In summary
i18n team feels the purpose of extension gets defeated if its not set as
default. I tried convincing them for days it wont get defeated, but this is
a PoV debate and solution remains at heart :). If you feel having the
default fonts with hinting issue will affect many more people than it would
benefit(In case of Tamil it was over 10x), then file a bug for removing
WebFonts for or wp. But what next? 2 options.
1. If fonts are bad and have hinting issues, {{SOFIXIT}} . Suggest to
Santhosh what are the issues, where it could get better, he will try his
best and do as much as he can do. We did the same for Tamil, Lohit-Tamil is
improved than what upstream gave, but there is a limitation here as to how
much Santhosh can help since he is not a professional typographer and you
may not be satisfied very much with font even after the exercise (like we
are). There is also delivery issue which needs to be sorted if we are going
to go this way since Win 7, most linux OS dont have hinting issue but win
xp has it.
2. Get more free fonts. Look out for other free(ly licensed) fonts,
convince people to release fonts under free license.Create a new
font(Easier said than done,but its not Impossible). Beg,Borrow (no Steal
doesnt apply here :D, Acquire probably applies in case money is only thing
stopping, then a reasonable grant request might help). In short get
alternative fonts which can be used.
[1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31936#c2
--
Regards
Srikanth.L
--
Regards,
Srikanth Ramakrishnan.
Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
* * *While testing both Lohit and Utkal has hinting problems in or wp, is that possible to keep them optional? As of now automatically the default font changes to Lohit when you open or wp, instead of that is that possible to make it optional which someone can choose the dropdown?* Welcome to the club Subha. Finally we have some company :-) We have been having the same difference of opinion with the i18n team since late october (whole story in the bug linked by srikanth). It is a POV issue as Srikanth points out. The i18n team aims to avoid the occurrence of square boxes in any of the wikiprojects using webfonts. While we feel that shouldnt occur till quality of default webfont = system font. Especially for cases like Tamil, where people with system fonts are 9-10x the number of people who see square boxes (all windows systems post XP SP2 have tamil unicode support by default and also people are very knowledgeable about font issues because of a history of competing encoding formats) While we still insist on the webfont as non-default option, we are exploring both solutions Srikanth lists to arrive at the default webfont with same quality as system font result. Currently the Tamil community is a) working with santosh as he tries to improve lohit tamil b) and is searching for a professional font developer to donate a good quality webfont ready font under OFL/GPL font exclusion. You can try either or both of these (or request the i18n for a non-default webfont feature) - Bala ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
Hi All, While testing both Lohit and Utkal has hinting problems in or wp, is that possible to keep them optional? As of now automatically the default font changes to Lohit when you open or wp, instead of that is that possible to make it optional which someone can choose the dropdown? Subha 2011/12/16 ViswaPrabha (വിശ്വപ്രഭ) viswapra...@gmail.com Praveen Prakash +1 On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 09:46, Praveen Prakash me.prav...@gmail.comwrote: There is lot to say. But i don't want to derail this thread. Pls start a new thread. On 16/12/2011, Anivar Aravind anivar.arav...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 8:49 AM, Praveen Prakash me.prav...@gmail.com wrote: I haven't seen any communication in any open platform with Malayalam Community members about this matter. A few weeks before I had a brief discussion with Santhosh about webfonts. But it was nothing about webfonts' rendering bugs. Infact, popular (and beautiful) Malayalam fonts are open licensed, but there are other rendering bugs. Issue I raised was about an unnessessory char code change doing by webfonts which I felt a propaganda pushing in favor of his idea about some characters, and which need additional scripts on both client (= additional bandwidth) and server. But Santhosh quit the thread claiming my concerns are my pure imaginations. :) Naturally thread died. Praveen Do you mean this bug ? https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29005 The bug speaks itself . From a quick reading I felt what you were asking is to use not properly forked font projects in webfonts, when santhosh took a stand to use fonts them from upstream. On Normalization of characters, it is an optional feature, for visibility of some chillus , that can be disabled in user settings if needed. It perfectly makes sense for me, since dual encoding is an issue in Malayalam , and the fix need to be on Unicode . The Webfonts hack is just a positive step and optional fix to ensure, people will not be missed from accessing knowledge in wikipedia , based on browser restrictions. Anivar I know Malayalam Wikimedian 'Vssun' tried to have an open conversation on Gerard's talk page, after Gerard's notice, but didn't see any development. As far as now I know no one, who was sure about webfonts deployment on ml projects. I certainly do not want webfonts in its current form in any of the Malayalam Wikiprojects. But I want to know why Malayalam is excluded from this deployment and I want to know why such a code deployed on many other wikies. I personally don't like Santhosh's enthusiasm to fly his scripts on wikimedia servers, based on his I am correct, I am correct, I am the only correct attitude. If webfonts is too bad for your language, I urge you to file a bug for removing it. On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 2:19 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: If you want to test something new, either make it opt in, or don't do it live. Not on Tamil, not on Hindi, not on any Wikipedia for that matter. On 12/14/11, Ravishankar ravidre...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.comwrote: I dont think its appropriate to be a bit more experimental. You are seeing the scale in absolute sense, we are seeing it in relative sense. Tamil Wikipedia is 7th most-viewed Tamil site. +1. Similar stats can be observed for most of the Indic language Wiki projects with sizable content as they are the only / major source of reference online for the respective languages. Ravi -- Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan. Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- [It is not] possible to distinguish between 'numerical' and 'nonnumerical' algorithms, as if numbers were somehow different from other kinds of precise information. - Donald Knuth ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- With love Praveen http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Praveenp:talk http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Praveenp ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 07:33, Subhashish Panigrahi
psubhash...@gmail.comwrote:
Hi All,
While testing both Lohit and Utkal has hinting problems in or wp, is that
possible to keep them optional? As of now automatically the default font
changes to Lohit when you open or wp, instead of that is that possible to
make it optional which someone can choose the dropdown?
Welcome to the world finally! Go read the bug[1] for a start. In summary
i18n team feels the purpose of extension gets defeated if its not set as
default. I tried convincing them for days it wont get defeated, but this is
a PoV debate and solution remains at heart :). If you feel having the
default fonts with hinting issue will affect many more people than it would
benefit(In case of Tamil it was over 10x), then file a bug for removing
WebFonts for or wp. But what next? 2 options.
1. If fonts are bad and have hinting issues, {{SOFIXIT}} . Suggest to
Santhosh what are the issues, where it could get better, he will try his
best and do as much as he can do. We did the same for Tamil, Lohit-Tamil is
improved than what upstream gave, but there is a limitation here as to how
much Santhosh can help since he is not a professional typographer and you
may not be satisfied very much with font even after the exercise (like we
are). There is also delivery issue which needs to be sorted if we are going
to go this way since Win 7, most linux OS dont have hinting issue but win
xp has it.
2. Get more free fonts. Look out for other free(ly licensed) fonts,
convince people to release fonts under free license.Create a new
font(Easier said than done,but its not Impossible). Beg,Borrow (no Steal
doesnt apply here :D, Acquire probably applies in case money is only thing
stopping, then a reasonable grant request might help). In short get
alternative fonts which can be used.
[1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31936#c2
--
Regards
Srikanth.L
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
If you want to test something new, either make it opt in, or don't do it live. Not on Tamil, not on Hindi, not on any Wikipedia for that matter. On 12/14/11, Ravishankar ravidre...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.comwrote: I dont think its appropriate to be a bit more experimental. You are seeing the scale in absolute sense, we are seeing it in relative sense. Tamil Wikipedia is 7th most-viewed Tamil site. +1. Similar stats can be observed for most of the Indic language Wiki projects with sizable content as they are the only / major source of reference online for the respective languages. Ravi -- Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan. Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
I haven't seen any communication in any open platform with Malayalam Community members about this matter. A few weeks before I had a brief discussion with Santhosh about webfonts. But it was nothing about webfonts' rendering bugs. Infact, popular (and beautiful) Malayalam fonts are open licensed, but there are other rendering bugs. Issue I raised was about an unnessessory char code change doing by webfonts which I felt a propaganda pushing in favor of his idea about some characters, and which need additional scripts on both client (= additional bandwidth) and server. But Santhosh quit the thread claiming my concerns are my pure imaginations. :) Naturally thread died. I know Malayalam Wikimedian 'Vssun' tried to have an open conversation on Gerard's talk page, after Gerard's notice, but didn't see any development. As far as now I know no one, who was sure about webfonts deployment on ml projects. I certainly do not want webfonts in its current form in any of the Malayalam Wikiprojects. But I want to know why Malayalam is excluded from this deployment and I want to know why such a code deployed on many other wikies. I personally don't like Santhosh's enthusiasm to fly his scripts on wikimedia servers, based on his I am correct, I am correct, I am the only correct attitude. If webfonts is too bad for your language, I urge you to file a bug for removing it. On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 2:19 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: If you want to test something new, either make it opt in, or don't do it live. Not on Tamil, not on Hindi, not on any Wikipedia for that matter. On 12/14/11, Ravishankar ravidre...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.comwrote: I dont think its appropriate to be a bit more experimental. You are seeing the scale in absolute sense, we are seeing it in relative sense. Tamil Wikipedia is 7th most-viewed Tamil site. +1. Similar stats can be observed for most of the Indic language Wiki projects with sizable content as they are the only / major source of reference online for the respective languages. Ravi -- Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan. Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 8:49 AM, Praveen Prakash me.prav...@gmail.com wrote: I haven't seen any communication in any open platform with Malayalam Community members about this matter. A few weeks before I had a brief discussion with Santhosh about webfonts. But it was nothing about webfonts' rendering bugs. Infact, popular (and beautiful) Malayalam fonts are open licensed, but there are other rendering bugs. Issue I raised was about an unnessessory char code change doing by webfonts which I felt a propaganda pushing in favor of his idea about some characters, and which need additional scripts on both client (= additional bandwidth) and server. But Santhosh quit the thread claiming my concerns are my pure imaginations. :) Naturally thread died. Praveen Do you mean this bug ? https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29005 The bug speaks itself . From a quick reading I felt what you were asking is to use not properly forked font projects in webfonts, when santhosh took a stand to use fonts them from upstream. On Normalization of characters, it is an optional feature, for visibility of some chillus , that can be disabled in user settings if needed. It perfectly makes sense for me, since dual encoding is an issue in Malayalam , and the fix need to be on Unicode . The Webfonts hack is just a positive step and optional fix to ensure, people will not be missed from accessing knowledge in wikipedia , based on browser restrictions. Anivar I know Malayalam Wikimedian 'Vssun' tried to have an open conversation on Gerard's talk page, after Gerard's notice, but didn't see any development. As far as now I know no one, who was sure about webfonts deployment on ml projects. I certainly do not want webfonts in its current form in any of the Malayalam Wikiprojects. But I want to know why Malayalam is excluded from this deployment and I want to know why such a code deployed on many other wikies. I personally don't like Santhosh's enthusiasm to fly his scripts on wikimedia servers, based on his I am correct, I am correct, I am the only correct attitude. If webfonts is too bad for your language, I urge you to file a bug for removing it. On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 2:19 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: If you want to test something new, either make it opt in, or don't do it live. Not on Tamil, not on Hindi, not on any Wikipedia for that matter. On 12/14/11, Ravishankar ravidre...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.comwrote: I dont think its appropriate to be a bit more experimental. You are seeing the scale in absolute sense, we are seeing it in relative sense. Tamil Wikipedia is 7th most-viewed Tamil site. +1. Similar stats can be observed for most of the Indic language Wiki projects with sizable content as they are the only / major source of reference online for the respective languages. Ravi -- Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan. Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- [It is not] possible to distinguish between 'numerical' and 'nonnumerical' algorithms, as if numbers were somehow different from other kinds of precise information. - Donald Knuth ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
There is lot to say. But i don't want to derail this thread. Pls start a new thread. On 16/12/2011, Anivar Aravind anivar.arav...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 8:49 AM, Praveen Prakash me.prav...@gmail.com wrote: I haven't seen any communication in any open platform with Malayalam Community members about this matter. A few weeks before I had a brief discussion with Santhosh about webfonts. But it was nothing about webfonts' rendering bugs. Infact, popular (and beautiful) Malayalam fonts are open licensed, but there are other rendering bugs. Issue I raised was about an unnessessory char code change doing by webfonts which I felt a propaganda pushing in favor of his idea about some characters, and which need additional scripts on both client (= additional bandwidth) and server. But Santhosh quit the thread claiming my concerns are my pure imaginations. :) Naturally thread died. Praveen Do you mean this bug ? https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29005 The bug speaks itself . From a quick reading I felt what you were asking is to use not properly forked font projects in webfonts, when santhosh took a stand to use fonts them from upstream. On Normalization of characters, it is an optional feature, for visibility of some chillus , that can be disabled in user settings if needed. It perfectly makes sense for me, since dual encoding is an issue in Malayalam , and the fix need to be on Unicode . The Webfonts hack is just a positive step and optional fix to ensure, people will not be missed from accessing knowledge in wikipedia , based on browser restrictions. Anivar I know Malayalam Wikimedian 'Vssun' tried to have an open conversation on Gerard's talk page, after Gerard's notice, but didn't see any development. As far as now I know no one, who was sure about webfonts deployment on ml projects. I certainly do not want webfonts in its current form in any of the Malayalam Wikiprojects. But I want to know why Malayalam is excluded from this deployment and I want to know why such a code deployed on many other wikies. I personally don't like Santhosh's enthusiasm to fly his scripts on wikimedia servers, based on his I am correct, I am correct, I am the only correct attitude. If webfonts is too bad for your language, I urge you to file a bug for removing it. On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 2:19 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: If you want to test something new, either make it opt in, or don't do it live. Not on Tamil, not on Hindi, not on any Wikipedia for that matter. On 12/14/11, Ravishankar ravidre...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.comwrote: I dont think its appropriate to be a bit more experimental. You are seeing the scale in absolute sense, we are seeing it in relative sense. Tamil Wikipedia is 7th most-viewed Tamil site. +1. Similar stats can be observed for most of the Indic language Wiki projects with sizable content as they are the only / major source of reference online for the respective languages. Ravi -- Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan. Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- [It is not] possible to distinguish between 'numerical' and 'nonnumerical' algorithms, as if numbers were somehow different from other kinds of precise information. - Donald Knuth ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- With love Praveen http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Praveenp:talkhttp://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Praveenp ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
Praveen Prakash +1 On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 09:46, Praveen Prakash me.prav...@gmail.com wrote: There is lot to say. But i don't want to derail this thread. Pls start a new thread. On 16/12/2011, Anivar Aravind anivar.arav...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 8:49 AM, Praveen Prakash me.prav...@gmail.com wrote: I haven't seen any communication in any open platform with Malayalam Community members about this matter. A few weeks before I had a brief discussion with Santhosh about webfonts. But it was nothing about webfonts' rendering bugs. Infact, popular (and beautiful) Malayalam fonts are open licensed, but there are other rendering bugs. Issue I raised was about an unnessessory char code change doing by webfonts which I felt a propaganda pushing in favor of his idea about some characters, and which need additional scripts on both client (= additional bandwidth) and server. But Santhosh quit the thread claiming my concerns are my pure imaginations. :) Naturally thread died. Praveen Do you mean this bug ? https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29005 The bug speaks itself . From a quick reading I felt what you were asking is to use not properly forked font projects in webfonts, when santhosh took a stand to use fonts them from upstream. On Normalization of characters, it is an optional feature, for visibility of some chillus , that can be disabled in user settings if needed. It perfectly makes sense for me, since dual encoding is an issue in Malayalam , and the fix need to be on Unicode . The Webfonts hack is just a positive step and optional fix to ensure, people will not be missed from accessing knowledge in wikipedia , based on browser restrictions. Anivar I know Malayalam Wikimedian 'Vssun' tried to have an open conversation on Gerard's talk page, after Gerard's notice, but didn't see any development. As far as now I know no one, who was sure about webfonts deployment on ml projects. I certainly do not want webfonts in its current form in any of the Malayalam Wikiprojects. But I want to know why Malayalam is excluded from this deployment and I want to know why such a code deployed on many other wikies. I personally don't like Santhosh's enthusiasm to fly his scripts on wikimedia servers, based on his I am correct, I am correct, I am the only correct attitude. If webfonts is too bad for your language, I urge you to file a bug for removing it. On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 2:19 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: If you want to test something new, either make it opt in, or don't do it live. Not on Tamil, not on Hindi, not on any Wikipedia for that matter. On 12/14/11, Ravishankar ravidre...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.comwrote: I dont think its appropriate to be a bit more experimental. You are seeing the scale in absolute sense, we are seeing it in relative sense. Tamil Wikipedia is 7th most-viewed Tamil site. +1. Similar stats can be observed for most of the Indic language Wiki projects with sizable content as they are the only / major source of reference online for the respective languages. Ravi -- Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan. Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- [It is not] possible to distinguish between 'numerical' and 'nonnumerical' algorithms, as if numbers were somehow different from other kinds of precise information. - Donald Knuth ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- With love Praveen http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Praveenp:talk http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Praveenp ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
I used to get broken text for Hindi/Devanagari and Tamil, and boxes for other scripts. Now I see no difference in the text on my phone. On 12/13/11, Pradeep Mohandas pradeep.mohan...@gmail.com wrote: hi, Curious: Is anybody testing this for mobile web? Shiju's report last week suggested an increase in traffic via mobile web, I think. I have started trying to read ml.wiki on my cell pointing my phone browser at ml.m.wikipedia.org and all I get are boxes right now. I'm using Opera Mini browser on a Nokia E63. Pradeep Handheld On 14/12/2011, Bala Jeyaraman sodabot...@gmail.com wrote: Have found a few more bugs in testing (other than the ones mentioned in the original mail) 1) Nepali - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33039 2) Sanskrit, Hindi and Nepali - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33038 3) Odiya - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33034 4) Sanskrit, Hindi - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33040 And they keep coming. At this rate me and srikanth should be paid per bug by the WMF. I am yet to touch Assamese, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali or Firefox 4.x, 6.x and IE 6.0, 8.0 and have only began Chrome testing. I am totally wiped for the day and quitting testing. Will try to cover the other cases tomorrow. Two thoughts at the end of a long day: i) To i18n team: Instead of launching a such a buggy code, that too as a compulsory and default option for all users, why not listen to feedback and do proper testing?. Testing is always better than firefighting. Its never too late, roll back this soft launch, form language teams, test this for a few weeks thoroughly and then do project by project launches. ii)To Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Sanskrit, Oriya, Marathi, Assamese and Bengali folks on this list. Spread the word and test, test, test. File bug reports. This needs thorough testing in all OSes/browsers/connections by people who know the language. Learn from this experience and dont accept any untested products. Mayur has reported in one of the bugs that hi wiki users are reporting strange issues and has suggested making webfonts optional [1] A few weeks back i tried to warn the communities not to accept webfonts without proper testing. [2] What i feared has come to pass. Probably should have posted in all village pumps. ==Links== [1]https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33024 [2] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-November/005153.html On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 9:44 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: Also forgot to tell you. My college uses ONLY systems with Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6. Most students are from a Tamil background, and they read Tamil websites, Wikipedia very often. On 12/13/11, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, Pardon for a long mail, just unavoidable. We have seen the WebFonts roll out[0] last night to most Indic wikis except Malayalam and Tamil. We in Tamil Community felt WebFonts extension is just not ready for us. We would like to share on why we in Tamil community didnt chose webfonts and also what could work better in future for Indic communities during technology adoption. 1. *Unavailability of Quality Free fonts* :- During the development, our request for not setting the default font as a lower quality font was rejected citing it will defeat the purpose of extension.[1] The available fonts had issues and deploying the extension with those low quality fonts to everyone would not only defeat the purpose of extension, but also gives Tamil Wikipedia a bad image when people just cant read the fonts even though they had better fonts in system. (Just like how i18n team says people who see boxes will just simply close the window, we say giving these poor fonts will also lead to same thing and not help the cause, instead will also hurt those who have better fonts.). 2. *Quality of User Experience* :- We are a smaller wiki, we have a smaller reader base, but still we are ranked 7th most visited website in Tamil according to alexa[2]. Just like how no-nonsense / no-mediocrity is tolerated in any code that enters WMF cluster, any change which will affect the site's look and feel, user experience will have to be of highest standards and must be accepted by community. WebFonts were just not ready to enter Wikipedia, since it changes the UX for all the readers to help a potentially lower number of users who dont have Tamil fonts than the current existing reader base. *What we feel was wrong in WebFonts deployment* We have also been seeing the wikis where they have been rolled out and reporting issues. We ourselves are reporting issues inspite of not taking WebFonts, with the hope software just gets better and some day we can deploy them. Dont get us wrong, we are not against technology, we just need it in better
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
The order which was mentioned by Srikanth L, is very useful for the smaller Wiki projects. Because, many End users using WP, Wiktionary very most. (I understand the power of Wiktionary today. My math professor said, *Use Tamil Wiktionary to get equivalent Tamil word for an English word!*)* *I wondered. :) As, he's a professor in college he may not know much about these communities behind those projects. Because, the end user only likes OUTPUT just output data. He will not feel about the *Red link* or anything else. So, from that POV, these kind of extensions should be checked in all platforms. Thanks Bala for checking *ALL (currently web fonts installed languages) *Indic languages reporting bugs. Thanks. *$U®¥∩* http://goo.gl/RoMyo.com http://FirefoxSurya.blogspot.com http://about.me/suryaceg On 14 December 2011 11:18, Pradeep Mohandas pradeep.mohan...@gmail.comwrote: hi, Curious: Is anybody testing this for mobile web? Shiju's report last week suggested an increase in traffic via mobile web, I think. I have started trying to read ml.wiki on my cell pointing my phone browser at ml.m.wikipedia.org and all I get are boxes right now. I'm using Opera Mini browser on a Nokia E63. Pradeep Handheld On 14/12/2011, Bala Jeyaraman sodabot...@gmail.com wrote: Have found a few more bugs in testing (other than the ones mentioned in the original mail) 1) Nepali - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33039 2) Sanskrit, Hindi and Nepali - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33038 3) Odiya - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33034 4) Sanskrit, Hindi - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33040 And they keep coming. At this rate me and srikanth should be paid per bug by the WMF. I am yet to touch Assamese, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali or Firefox 4.x, 6.x and IE 6.0, 8.0 and have only began Chrome testing. I am totally wiped for the day and quitting testing. Will try to cover the other cases tomorrow. Two thoughts at the end of a long day: i) To i18n team: Instead of launching a such a buggy code, that too as a compulsory and default option for all users, why not listen to feedback and do proper testing?. Testing is always better than firefighting. Its never too late, roll back this soft launch, form language teams, test this for a few weeks thoroughly and then do project by project launches. ii)To Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Sanskrit, Oriya, Marathi, Assamese and Bengali folks on this list. Spread the word and test, test, test. File bug reports. This needs thorough testing in all OSes/browsers/connections by people who know the language. Learn from this experience and dont accept any untested products. Mayur has reported in one of the bugs that hi wiki users are reporting strange issues and has suggested making webfonts optional [1] A few weeks back i tried to warn the communities not to accept webfonts without proper testing. [2] What i feared has come to pass. Probably should have posted in all village pumps. ==Links== [1]https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33024 [2] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-November/005153.html On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 9:44 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: Also forgot to tell you. My college uses ONLY systems with Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6. Most students are from a Tamil background, and they read Tamil websites, Wikipedia very often. On 12/13/11, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, Pardon for a long mail, just unavoidable. We have seen the WebFonts roll out[0] last night to most Indic wikis except Malayalam and Tamil. We in Tamil Community felt WebFonts extension is just not ready for us. We would like to share on why we in Tamil community didnt chose webfonts and also what could work better in future for Indic communities during technology adoption. 1. *Unavailability of Quality Free fonts* :- During the development, our request for not setting the default font as a lower quality font was rejected citing it will defeat the purpose of extension.[1] The available fonts had issues and deploying the extension with those low quality fonts to everyone would not only defeat the purpose of extension, but also gives Tamil Wikipedia a bad image when people just cant read the fonts even though they had better fonts in system. (Just like how i18n team says people who see boxes will just simply close the window, we say giving these poor fonts will also lead to same thing and not help the cause, instead will also hurt those who have better fonts.). 2. *Quality of User Experience* :- We are a smaller wiki, we have a smaller reader base, but still we are ranked 7th most visited website in Tamil according to alexa[2]. Just like how no-nonsense / no-mediocrity is
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
Hi, Due to my ongoing wikihiatus, I haven't followed much of discussions in this list. But, I'm interested in this issue because I was following and supporting the original request filed by User:SanthoshGuru asking for such a support in 2005.[1] While I welcome the recent energy in building and launching solutions for Indic languages by WMF. However, like Srikanth and Bala have mentioned, we should ensure that we don't break the experience of thousands of readers visiting the wikis everyday. The situation is very different now than in 2005. So, let us take care to test every new launch tested out in translatewiki before rolling out. We can perhaps create a rollout routine to include a thumbs-up from some community volunteers. Regards, Sundar [1] - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2361 That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted. - George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture From: Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com To: Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia. wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 9:17 PM Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects Hi all, Pardon for a long mail, just unavoidable. We have seen the WebFonts roll out[0] last night to most Indic wikis except Malayalam and Tamil. We in Tamil Community felt WebFonts extension is just not ready for us. We would like to share on why we in Tamil community didnt chose webfonts and also what could work better in future for Indic communities during technology adoption. 1. Unavailability of Quality Free fonts :- During the development, our request for not setting the default font as a lower quality font was rejected citing it will defeat the purpose of extension.[1] The available fonts had issues and deploying the extension with those low quality fonts to everyone would not only defeat the purpose of extension, but also gives Tamil Wikipedia a bad image when people just cant read the fonts even though they had better fonts in system. (Just like how i18n team says people who see boxes will just simply close the window, we say giving these poor fonts will also lead to same thing and not help the cause, instead will also hurt those who have better fonts.). 2. Quality of User Experience :- We are a smaller wiki, we have a smaller reader base, but still we are ranked 7th most visited website in Tamil according to alexa[2]. Just like how no-nonsense / no-mediocrity is tolerated in any code that enters WMF cluster, any change which will affect the site's look and feel, user experience will have to be of highest standards and must be accepted by community. WebFonts were just not ready to enter Wikipedia, since it changes the UX for all the readers to help a potentially lower number of users who dont have Tamil fonts than the current existing reader base. What we feel was wrong in WebFonts deployment We have also been seeing the wikis where they have been rolled out and reporting issues. We ourselves are reporting issues inspite of not taking WebFonts, with the hope software just gets better and some day we can deploy them. Dont get us wrong, we are not against technology, we just need it in better form and are not in any urgency. (After all we at Ta wiki initiated an RFC and asked Webfonts even before the announcement was made). We would also like to mention some points which we feel i18n team could have done better for a smoother launch. 1. Font Testing :- The point of language support team is that the people who are aware of language give feedback to make any software better supported for the language. We are not sure if Font-Testing was ever done at all for those languages where the WebFonts were deployed. The hinting issue which was a concern and made us raise against deployment in Tamil is also present in Hindi,Sanskrit,Telugu(atleast till we saw) and gave the same worst readability. The i18n team did font assessment[3], testing only 1 word to test the font. Can any font be tested with just rendering of 4 characters / 1 word? For Tamil,we did a test in little more comprehensive way(We would not say its complete)[4]. This should have been a *must* to see rendering / font issues with chosen default font especially since the fonts are being set default to every single user to the site. Sadly community was involved the least, a note was posted in Village pumps and we dont think community involved itself in any testing and poor quality was eventually pushed without proper testing. 2. Real world testing :- Though cross browser testing was done, there was a severe lack of real world testing and as a result we are seeing a host of issues being discovered post launch. Average PC in India might have 1 GB RAM, Firefox 3 / 4, worse IE 5.5 / IE6 on 100 Kbps
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
Hi all, Just cross-posting a note from Siebrand that he just sent out [1]. Everyone is working on the same goals here. I encourage continued partnership and efforts to find ways to work around some of the problems lists on this thread (including implementation of some of the solutions listed on this thread too). The challenges of improving the experience for readers and editors in many Indic languages that are not well supported by the current powerhouses of the internet is huge...but doable, if we continue to work together. [1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2011-December/056966.html Best, Barry On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 9:53 AM, BalaSundaraRaman sundarbe...@yahoo.comwrote: Hi, Due to my ongoing wikihiatus, I haven't followed much of discussions in this list. But, I'm interested in this issue because I was following and supporting the original request filed by User:SanthoshGuru asking for such a support in 2005.[1] While I welcome the recent energy in building and launching solutions for Indic languages by WMF. However, like Srikanth and Bala have mentioned, we should ensure that we don't break the experience of thousands of readers visiting the wikis everyday. The situation is very different now than in 2005. So, let us take care to test every new launch tested out in translatewiki before rolling out. We can perhaps create a rollout routine to include a thumbs-up from some community volunteers. Regards, Sundar [1] - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2361 That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted. - George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture -- *From:* Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com *To:* Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia. wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org *Sent:* Tuesday, December 13, 2011 9:17 PM *Subject:* [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects Hi all, Pardon for a long mail, just unavoidable. We have seen the WebFonts roll out[0] last night to most Indic wikis except Malayalam and Tamil. We in Tamil Community felt WebFonts extension is just not ready for us. We would like to share on why we in Tamil community didnt chose webfonts and also what could work better in future for Indic communities during technology adoption. 1. *Unavailability of Quality Free fonts* :- During the development, our request for not setting the default font as a lower quality font was rejected citing it will defeat the purpose of extension.[1] The available fonts had issues and deploying the extension with those low quality fonts to everyone would not only defeat the purpose of extension, but also gives Tamil Wikipedia a bad image when people just cant read the fonts even though they had better fonts in system. (Just like how i18n team says people who see boxes will just simply close the window, we say giving these poor fonts will also lead to same thing and not help the cause, instead will also hurt those who have better fonts.). 2. *Quality of User Experience* :- We are a smaller wiki, we have a smaller reader base, but still we are ranked 7th most visited website in Tamil according to alexa[2]. Just like how no-nonsense / no-mediocrity is tolerated in any code that enters WMF cluster, any change which will affect the site's look and feel, user experience will have to be of highest standards and must be accepted by community. WebFonts were just not ready to enter Wikipedia, since it changes the UX for all the readers to help a potentially lower number of users who dont have Tamil fonts than the current existing reader base. *What we feel was wrong in WebFonts deployment* We have also been seeing the wikis where they have been rolled out and reporting issues. We ourselves are reporting issues inspite of not taking WebFonts, with the hope software just gets better and some day we can deploy them. Dont get us wrong, we are not against technology, we just need it in better form and are not in any urgency. (After all we at Ta wiki initiated an RFC and asked Webfonts even before the announcement was made). We would also like to mention some points which we feel i18n team could have done better for a smoother launch. 1. *Font Testing* :- The point of language support team is that the people who are aware of language give feedback to make any software better supported for the language. We are not sure if Font-Testing was ever done at all for those languages where the WebFonts were deployed. The hinting issue which was a concern and made us raise against deployment in Tamil is also present in Hindi,Sanskrit,Telugu(atleast till we saw) and gave the same worst readability. The i18n team did font assessment[3], testing only 1 word to test the font. Can any font be tested with just rendering of 4 characters / 1 word? For Tamil,we did
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com wrote: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-i18n/2011-December/000361.html In order to force them, if you don't test this it may break horribly for you when deployed seems way more convincing than no new goodies for you. This attitude of i18n is not only very dangerous for the communities and languages but also very unprofessional. Please read that mail once again, this was a response by Platonides(not an i18n team member) to the comment by Srikanth L . Srikanth said: If people are not interested to join them, they must be forced to join them(by way of not supporting them/ deploying any component for the language) so as to provide better support. And now you are saying that it is the attitude of i18n and calling it dangerous and unprofessional! Wonderful Ravishankar. . Nothing that breaks horrible must ever be deployed. We safeguarded Tamil(Malayalam folks did theirs too), we frankly didnt care much for others before the launch. Srikanth, While I really appreciate the efforts you and Bala did with the testing and reporting bugs, this kind of comments really disappoint us. You are aware that the we were working round the clock to fix all the bugs within hours and we wrote the complete details in report. Safeguarding from a horrible deployment? Could you please stop exaggerating things? We did expect bugs when we do this kind of large scale deployment with too many languages, browsers, operating systems and we addressed each of the bugs within hours. Some of these bugs can be only detected when we expose the tool to a larger audience. You are aware of that. All the open bugs now present are are not in our control - Browser bugs and Fonts bug, we disabled them for time being. Please be constructive and help us as you were doing. We deserve some appreciation for what we are doing. -Santhosh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
* Safeguarding from a horrible deployment? Could you please stop exaggerating things? * Try deploying this kind of code to english wikipedia and you will find out our response is extremely mild. A website that is getting million page views shouldnt be used as a live test bed for a mandatory default feature. We have been boasting that wikipedia are among the top 5 websites in the world. Try rolling out this kind of code in any of the top 100 websites as a mandatory default feature and see what happens. *Please be constructive and help us as you were doing* So stating the truth is being unconstructive?. You could have rolled this out in phases or as a dark launch as you are contemplating now, done more testing and saved us all this bitterness and trouble. Instead you decided to go live on a massive scale without adequate testing in live environment being accessed by millions of people everyday. What kind of reaction did your expect?. I could have been content with stopping the Tamil deployment and went on with my work. Instead i have spent nearly 20 hours testing other languages so that this tool gets better. Remember i am a volunteer, taking time off from my day job to test your code - something you should have done as part your professional work. On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 12:03 PM, Santhosh Thottingal santhosh.thottin...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com wrote: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-i18n/2011-December/000361.html In order to force them, if you don't test this it may break horribly for you when deployed seems way more convincing than no new goodies for you. This attitude of i18n is not only very dangerous for the communities and languages but also very unprofessional. Please read that mail once again, this was a response by Platonides(not an i18n team member) to the comment by Srikanth L . Srikanth said: If people are not interested to join them, they must be forced to join them(by way of not supporting them/ deploying any component for the language) so as to provide better support. And now you are saying that it is the attitude of i18n and calling it dangerous and unprofessional! Wonderful Ravishankar. . Nothing that breaks horrible must ever be deployed. We safeguarded Tamil(Malayalam folks did theirs too), we frankly didnt care much for others before the launch. Srikanth, While I really appreciate the efforts you and Bala did with the testing and reporting bugs, this kind of comments really disappoint us. You are aware that the we were working round the clock to fix all the bugs within hours and we wrote the complete details in report. Safeguarding from a horrible deployment? Could you please stop exaggerating things? We did expect bugs when we do this kind of large scale deployment with too many languages, browsers, operating systems and we addressed each of the bugs within hours. Some of these bugs can be only detected when we expose the tool to a larger audience. You are aware of that. All the open bugs now present are are not in our control - Browser bugs and Fonts bug, we disabled them for time being. Please be constructive and help us as you were doing. We deserve some appreciation for what we are doing. -Santhosh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
Everyone is working on the same goals here. I encourage continued partnership and efforts to find ways to work around some of the problems lists on this thread (including implementation of some of the solutions listed on this thread too). The challenges of improving the experience for readers and editors in many Indic languages that are not well supported by the current powerhouses of the internet is huge...but doable, if we continue to work together. Sure Barry. I do agree. - Sundar That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted. - George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture From: Barry Newstead bnewst...@wikimedia.org To: Wikimedia India Community list wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2011 11:35 PM Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects Hi all, Just cross-posting a note from Siebrand that he just sent out [1]. Everyone is working on the same goals here. I encourage continued partnership and efforts to find ways to work around some of the problems lists on this thread (including implementation of some of the solutions listed on this thread too). The challenges of improving the experience for readers and editors in many Indic languages that are not well supported by the current powerhouses of the internet is huge...but doable, if we continue to work together. [1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2011-December/056966.html Best, Barry On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 9:53 AM, BalaSundaraRaman sundarbe...@yahoo.com wrote: Hi, Due to my ongoing wikihiatus, I haven't followed much of discussions in this list. But, I'm interested in this issue because I was following and supporting the original request filed by User:SanthoshGuru asking for such a support in 2005.[1] While I welcome the recent energy in building and launching solutions for Indic languages by WMF. However, like Srikanth and Bala have mentioned, we should ensure that we don't break the experience of thousands of readers visiting the wikis everyday. The situation is very different now than in 2005. So, let us take care to test every new launch tested out in translatewiki before rolling out. We can perhaps create a rollout routine to include a thumbs-up from some community volunteers. Regards, Sundar [1] - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2361 That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted. - George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture From: Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com To: Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia. wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 9:17 PM Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects Hi all, Pardon for a long mail, just unavoidable. We have seen the WebFonts roll out[0] last night to most Indic wikis except Malayalam and Tamil. We in Tamil Community felt WebFonts extension is just not ready for us. We would like to share on why we in Tamil community didnt chose webfonts and also what could work better in future for Indic communities during technology adoption. 1. Unavailability of Quality Free fonts :- During the development, our request for not setting the default font as a lower quality font was rejected citing it will defeat the purpose of extension.[1] The available fonts had issues and deploying the extension with those low quality fonts to everyone would not only defeat the purpose of extension, but also gives Tamil Wikipedia a bad image when people just cant read the fonts even though they had better fonts in system. (Just like how i18n team says people who see boxes will just simply close the window, we say giving these poor fonts will also lead to same thing and not help the cause, instead will also hurt those who have better fonts.). 2. Quality of User Experience :- We are a smaller wiki, we have a smaller reader base, but still we are ranked 7th most visited website in Tamil according to alexa[2]. Just like how no-nonsense / no-mediocrity is tolerated in any code that enters WMF cluster, any change which will affect the site's look and feel, user experience will have to be of highest standards and must be accepted by community. WebFonts were just not ready to enter Wikipedia, since it changes the UX for all the readers to help a potentially lower number of users who dont have Tamil fonts than the current existing reader base. What we feel was wrong in WebFonts deployment We have also been seeing the wikis where they have been rolled out and reporting issues. We ourselves are reporting issues inspite of not taking WebFonts, with the hope software just gets better and some day we can deploy
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 10:45 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabot...@gmail.com wrote: So stating the truth is being unconstructive?. You could have rolled this out in phases or as a dark launch as you are contemplating now, done more testing and saved us all this bitterness and trouble. Instead you decided to go live on a massive scale without adequate testing in live environment being accessed by millions of people everyday. Although, the largest of the Indic language Wikipedias gets about 1/900th the traffic of English Wikipedia in traffic. [1] I think it's appropriate to be a bit more experimental at that scale. It remains to be seen whether we can get sufficient testing done via opt-in methods and dark launches, although I'm certainly strongly encouraging experimentation with both. Your comparison with top web properties is flawed alongside another dimension: no other top web property has to solve the kinds of problems we're trying to solve here with a staff of three internationalization developers, one product manager and no QA team (!). Although we're larger now than a year ago and the year before, and we're still adding engineers and support resources, we have lots of big problems to solve in parallel. We don't have the luxury of being able to do just one thing extremely well, much as we might want to. On the other hand, what makes Wikimedia unique is precisely the fact that we're all working together to continually improve and fix things. In the best case scenario, that's a happy partnership. And as you well know, folks like Santhosh, Siebrand, Gerard, Niklas and Amir have made tremendous contributions as volunteers, well before being on staff. So we should strive for being collegial and forgiving. I have a feeling that we'll all be doing this for a long time, so we might as well try to like each other. :-) I applaud the i18n team for being bold and pushing things forward, while also reflecting on the process at this opportune time. I'm also grateful to you, to Srikanth and others for being both supportive and critical voices along the process, and getting very involved to fix things. Improving language support is a huge, daunting undertaking. WMF is only one player in this and it'll require continued, joint effort from all fronts. All best, Erik [1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN_India/ReportCardIndia.htm -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
*I have a feeling that we'll all be doing this for a long time, so we might as well try to like each other. :-)* Amen to that Erik :-). Me and Srikanth, very much want webfonts to improve, be expanded to mobile and make for an excellent UX . Thats the reason we are persisting in testing even though at times it feels we are butting our heads against a wall. *It remains to be seen whether we can get sufficient testing done via opt-in methods and dark launches, although I'm certainly strongly encouraging experimentation with both.* For Tamil, we think we have evolved a suitable balance to achieve this (apart from Siebrand's dark launch idea). A gradual - less active to more active wikiproject launch. (explained in the original mail). We adopted this after our first Narayam launch had to be rolled back due to bugs. It was a bit time consuming and took longer, but was iterative and extremely satisfactory On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 12:52 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 10:45 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabot...@gmail.com wrote: So stating the truth is being unconstructive?. You could have rolled this out in phases or as a dark launch as you are contemplating now, done more testing and saved us all this bitterness and trouble. Instead you decided to go live on a massive scale without adequate testing in live environment being accessed by millions of people everyday. Although, the largest of the Indic language Wikipedias gets about 1/900th the traffic of English Wikipedia in traffic. [1] I think it's appropriate to be a bit more experimental at that scale. It remains to be seen whether we can get sufficient testing done via opt-in methods and dark launches, although I'm certainly strongly encouraging experimentation with both. Your comparison with top web properties is flawed alongside another dimension: no other top web property has to solve the kinds of problems we're trying to solve here with a staff of three internationalization developers, one product manager and no QA team (!). Although we're larger now than a year ago and the year before, and we're still adding engineers and support resources, we have lots of big problems to solve in parallel. We don't have the luxury of being able to do just one thing extremely well, much as we might want to. On the other hand, what makes Wikimedia unique is precisely the fact that we're all working together to continually improve and fix things. In the best case scenario, that's a happy partnership. And as you well know, folks like Santhosh, Siebrand, Gerard, Niklas and Amir have made tremendous contributions as volunteers, well before being on staff. So we should strive for being collegial and forgiving. I have a feeling that we'll all be doing this for a long time, so we might as well try to like each other. :-) I applaud the i18n team for being bold and pushing things forward, while also reflecting on the process at this opportune time. I'm also grateful to you, to Srikanth and others for being both supportive and critical voices along the process, and getting very involved to fix things. Improving language support is a huge, daunting undertaking. WMF is only one player in this and it'll require continued, joint effort from all fronts. All best, Erik [1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN_India/ReportCardIndia.htm -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 12:52, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Although, the largest of the Indic language Wikipedias gets about 1/900th the traffic of English Wikipedia in traffic. [1] I think it's appropriate to be a bit more experimental at that scale. It remains to be seen whether we can get sufficient testing done via opt-in methods and dark launches, although I'm certainly strongly encouraging experimentation with both. I dont think its appropriate to be a bit more experimental. You are seeing the scale in absolute sense, we are seeing it in relative sense. Tamil Wikipedia is 7th most-viewed Tamil site. I will not agree if you say our comparison is flawed. We know that WebFonts is totally new technology area, WMF has limitations with fewer staff, we just commented what we felt could have been done better in current scenario only, with more involvement of community. I am sure all of us want to see better things and are focused to be constructive in changing things. -- Regards Srikanth.L ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
Srikanth, //Wait, no one called us critics. I mentioned it myself, since people felt our mail as criticism. If giving critical feedback is being criticism, am happy to be critic.// Thanks for the clarification. Santhosh, //Platonides(not an i18n team member)// Thank you for the clarification and I am sorry for the misunderstanding. While I do appreciate the work done by i18n, I still hold to the comments I made after observing several issues. So, this is not a comment about this single issue. WMF needs better understanding of Indic languages and their WikiProjects (Worst understanding example here: http://matadornetwork.com/notebook/qa-with-wikipedia-programmer-brandon-harris/) and should involve the community in a better way. I do not understand the urgency to go live with the Web fonts program in such a massive scale when it was very well advised in advance that it has problems. Why break and fix later when we have other options? Erik, //Although, the largest of the Indic language Wikipedias gets about 1/900th the traffic of English Wikipedia in traffic. [1] I think it's appropriate to be a bit more experimental at that scale.// If Web fonts is good to go live as it is, could Santhosh convince the Malayalam community about it? Just because the other communities are not strong enough and technically capable, doesn't mean they can be experimented upon whatever their size be. People like Bala and Srikanth can be helpful only in a limited way and all the bugs can be tracked only when the native speakers are involved. Ravi ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.comwrote: I dont think its appropriate to be a bit more experimental. You are seeing the scale in absolute sense, we are seeing it in relative sense. Tamil Wikipedia is 7th most-viewed Tamil site. +1. Similar stats can be observed for most of the Indic language Wiki projects with sizable content as they are the only / major source of reference online for the respective languages. Ravi ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
Rightly said Srikanth. I feel we not be hasty in rolling out new features and the whole community should be considered for testing. Especially since we are talking about Wikipedia. This reminds me of a case last week, where someone on the English Wikipedia replaced the Rupee symbol image with the Unicode character which isn't very compatible with everything. It resulted in boxes on latest browsers too. The user in question tried to justify by saying People should upgrade. Tell me, is this how things should be done. On 12/13/11, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, Pardon for a long mail, just unavoidable. We have seen the WebFonts roll out[0] last night to most Indic wikis except Malayalam and Tamil. We in Tamil Community felt WebFonts extension is just not ready for us. We would like to share on why we in Tamil community didnt chose webfonts and also what could work better in future for Indic communities during technology adoption. 1. *Unavailability of Quality Free fonts* :- During the development, our request for not setting the default font as a lower quality font was rejected citing it will defeat the purpose of extension.[1] The available fonts had issues and deploying the extension with those low quality fonts to everyone would not only defeat the purpose of extension, but also gives Tamil Wikipedia a bad image when people just cant read the fonts even though they had better fonts in system. (Just like how i18n team says people who see boxes will just simply close the window, we say giving these poor fonts will also lead to same thing and not help the cause, instead will also hurt those who have better fonts.). 2. *Quality of User Experience* :- We are a smaller wiki, we have a smaller reader base, but still we are ranked 7th most visited website in Tamil according to alexa[2]. Just like how no-nonsense / no-mediocrity is tolerated in any code that enters WMF cluster, any change which will affect the site's look and feel, user experience will have to be of highest standards and must be accepted by community. WebFonts were just not ready to enter Wikipedia, since it changes the UX for all the readers to help a potentially lower number of users who dont have Tamil fonts than the current existing reader base. *What we feel was wrong in WebFonts deployment* We have also been seeing the wikis where they have been rolled out and reporting issues. We ourselves are reporting issues inspite of not taking WebFonts, with the hope software just gets better and some day we can deploy them. Dont get us wrong, we are not against technology, we just need it in better form and are not in any urgency. (After all we at Ta wiki initiated an RFC and asked Webfonts even before the announcement was made). We would also like to mention some points which we feel i18n team could have done better for a smoother launch. 1. *Font Testing* :- The point of language support team is that the people who are aware of language give feedback to make any software better supported for the language. We are not sure if Font-Testing was ever done at all for those languages where the WebFonts were deployed. The hinting issue which was a concern and made us raise against deployment in Tamil is also present in Hindi,Sanskrit,Telugu(atleast till we saw) and gave the same worst readability. The i18n team did font assessment[3], testing only 1 word to test the font. Can any font be tested with just rendering of 4 characters / 1 word? For Tamil,we did a test in little more comprehensive way(We would not say its complete)[4]. This should have been a *must* to see rendering / font issues with chosen default font especially since the fonts are being set default to every single user to the site. Sadly community was involved the least, a note was posted in Village pumps and we dont think community involved itself in any testing and poor quality was eventually pushed without proper testing. 2. *Real world testing* :- Though cross browser testing was done, there was a severe lack of real world testing and as a result we are seeing a host of issues being discovered post launch. Average PC in India might have 1 GB RAM, Firefox 3 / 4, worse IE 5.5 / IE6 on 100 Kbps semi-broadband connection. We cannot tell them move to latest or ignore them. More care should have been taken especially since the webfonts is bound to set a default font. With only a few hours of testing serious issues have been found - in IE 8 where webfonts might be rolled back [5], IE 7.0 (where webfonts dont work) [6] , ubuntu + Firefox (fixed now) [7] and Win+Firefox 5.0, [8]. We are still testing for other browsers and usecases and dont know how many issues we will discover. In short - This code is not ready to go live, especially when it is being made default compulsorily for everyone. There are serious performance issues for typical Indian internet connections as well.[9] 3. *Communication
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
Also forgot to tell you. My college uses ONLY systems with Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6. Most students are from a Tamil background, and they read Tamil websites, Wikipedia very often. On 12/13/11, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, Pardon for a long mail, just unavoidable. We have seen the WebFonts roll out[0] last night to most Indic wikis except Malayalam and Tamil. We in Tamil Community felt WebFonts extension is just not ready for us. We would like to share on why we in Tamil community didnt chose webfonts and also what could work better in future for Indic communities during technology adoption. 1. *Unavailability of Quality Free fonts* :- During the development, our request for not setting the default font as a lower quality font was rejected citing it will defeat the purpose of extension.[1] The available fonts had issues and deploying the extension with those low quality fonts to everyone would not only defeat the purpose of extension, but also gives Tamil Wikipedia a bad image when people just cant read the fonts even though they had better fonts in system. (Just like how i18n team says people who see boxes will just simply close the window, we say giving these poor fonts will also lead to same thing and not help the cause, instead will also hurt those who have better fonts.). 2. *Quality of User Experience* :- We are a smaller wiki, we have a smaller reader base, but still we are ranked 7th most visited website in Tamil according to alexa[2]. Just like how no-nonsense / no-mediocrity is tolerated in any code that enters WMF cluster, any change which will affect the site's look and feel, user experience will have to be of highest standards and must be accepted by community. WebFonts were just not ready to enter Wikipedia, since it changes the UX for all the readers to help a potentially lower number of users who dont have Tamil fonts than the current existing reader base. *What we feel was wrong in WebFonts deployment* We have also been seeing the wikis where they have been rolled out and reporting issues. We ourselves are reporting issues inspite of not taking WebFonts, with the hope software just gets better and some day we can deploy them. Dont get us wrong, we are not against technology, we just need it in better form and are not in any urgency. (After all we at Ta wiki initiated an RFC and asked Webfonts even before the announcement was made). We would also like to mention some points which we feel i18n team could have done better for a smoother launch. 1. *Font Testing* :- The point of language support team is that the people who are aware of language give feedback to make any software better supported for the language. We are not sure if Font-Testing was ever done at all for those languages where the WebFonts were deployed. The hinting issue which was a concern and made us raise against deployment in Tamil is also present in Hindi,Sanskrit,Telugu(atleast till we saw) and gave the same worst readability. The i18n team did font assessment[3], testing only 1 word to test the font. Can any font be tested with just rendering of 4 characters / 1 word? For Tamil,we did a test in little more comprehensive way(We would not say its complete)[4]. This should have been a *must* to see rendering / font issues with chosen default font especially since the fonts are being set default to every single user to the site. Sadly community was involved the least, a note was posted in Village pumps and we dont think community involved itself in any testing and poor quality was eventually pushed without proper testing. 2. *Real world testing* :- Though cross browser testing was done, there was a severe lack of real world testing and as a result we are seeing a host of issues being discovered post launch. Average PC in India might have 1 GB RAM, Firefox 3 / 4, worse IE 5.5 / IE6 on 100 Kbps semi-broadband connection. We cannot tell them move to latest or ignore them. More care should have been taken especially since the webfonts is bound to set a default font. With only a few hours of testing serious issues have been found - in IE 8 where webfonts might be rolled back [5], IE 7.0 (where webfonts dont work) [6] , ubuntu + Firefox (fixed now) [7] and Win+Firefox 5.0, [8]. We are still testing for other browsers and usecases and dont know how many issues we will discover. In short - This code is not ready to go live, especially when it is being made default compulsorily for everyone. There are serious performance issues for typical Indian internet connections as well.[9] 3. *Communication and Community Engagement* :- Most of the above things could have solved earlier if there was more communication and community engagement. We asked for more information, engagement on this very list. There was no reply to the mail on increasing community engagement for i18n projects[10]. Most communities know WebFonts is
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
Have found a few more bugs in testing (other than the ones mentioned in the original mail) 1) Nepali - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33039 2) Sanskrit, Hindi and Nepali - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33038 3) Odiya - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33034 4) Sanskrit, Hindi - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33040 And they keep coming. At this rate me and srikanth should be paid per bug by the WMF. I am yet to touch Assamese, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali or Firefox 4.x, 6.x and IE 6.0, 8.0 and have only began Chrome testing. I am totally wiped for the day and quitting testing. Will try to cover the other cases tomorrow. Two thoughts at the end of a long day: i) To i18n team: Instead of launching a such a buggy code, that too as a compulsory and default option for all users, why not listen to feedback and do proper testing?. Testing is always better than firefighting. Its never too late, roll back this soft launch, form language teams, test this for a few weeks thoroughly and then do project by project launches. ii)To Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Sanskrit, Oriya, Marathi, Assamese and Bengali folks on this list. Spread the word and test, test, test. File bug reports. This needs thorough testing in all OSes/browsers/connections by people who know the language. Learn from this experience and dont accept any untested products. Mayur has reported in one of the bugs that hi wiki users are reporting strange issues and has suggested making webfonts optional [1] A few weeks back i tried to warn the communities not to accept webfonts without proper testing. [2] What i feared has come to pass. Probably should have posted in all village pumps. ==Links== [1]https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33024 [2] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-November/005153.html On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 9:44 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: Also forgot to tell you. My college uses ONLY systems with Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6. Most students are from a Tamil background, and they read Tamil websites, Wikipedia very often. On 12/13/11, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, Pardon for a long mail, just unavoidable. We have seen the WebFonts roll out[0] last night to most Indic wikis except Malayalam and Tamil. We in Tamil Community felt WebFonts extension is just not ready for us. We would like to share on why we in Tamil community didnt chose webfonts and also what could work better in future for Indic communities during technology adoption. 1. *Unavailability of Quality Free fonts* :- During the development, our request for not setting the default font as a lower quality font was rejected citing it will defeat the purpose of extension.[1] The available fonts had issues and deploying the extension with those low quality fonts to everyone would not only defeat the purpose of extension, but also gives Tamil Wikipedia a bad image when people just cant read the fonts even though they had better fonts in system. (Just like how i18n team says people who see boxes will just simply close the window, we say giving these poor fonts will also lead to same thing and not help the cause, instead will also hurt those who have better fonts.). 2. *Quality of User Experience* :- We are a smaller wiki, we have a smaller reader base, but still we are ranked 7th most visited website in Tamil according to alexa[2]. Just like how no-nonsense / no-mediocrity is tolerated in any code that enters WMF cluster, any change which will affect the site's look and feel, user experience will have to be of highest standards and must be accepted by community. WebFonts were just not ready to enter Wikipedia, since it changes the UX for all the readers to help a potentially lower number of users who dont have Tamil fonts than the current existing reader base. *What we feel was wrong in WebFonts deployment* We have also been seeing the wikis where they have been rolled out and reporting issues. We ourselves are reporting issues inspite of not taking WebFonts, with the hope software just gets better and some day we can deploy them. Dont get us wrong, we are not against technology, we just need it in better form and are not in any urgency. (After all we at Ta wiki initiated an RFC and asked Webfonts even before the announcement was made). We would also like to mention some points which we feel i18n team could have done better for a smoother launch. 1. *Font Testing* :- The point of language support team is that the people who are aware of language give feedback to make any software better supported for the language. We are not sure if Font-Testing was ever done at all for those languages where the WebFonts were deployed. The hinting issue which was a concern and made us raise against deployment in Tamil is also present in
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
hi, Curious: Is anybody testing this for mobile web? Shiju's report last week suggested an increase in traffic via mobile web, I think. I have started trying to read ml.wiki on my cell pointing my phone browser at ml.m.wikipedia.org and all I get are boxes right now. Pradeep Handheld On 14/12/2011, Bala Jeyaraman sodabot...@gmail.com wrote: Have found a few more bugs in testing (other than the ones mentioned in the original mail) 1) Nepali - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33039 2) Sanskrit, Hindi and Nepali - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33038 3) Odiya - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33034 4) Sanskrit, Hindi - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33040 And they keep coming. At this rate me and srikanth should be paid per bug by the WMF. I am yet to touch Assamese, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali or Firefox 4.x, 6.x and IE 6.0, 8.0 and have only began Chrome testing. I am totally wiped for the day and quitting testing. Will try to cover the other cases tomorrow. Two thoughts at the end of a long day: i) To i18n team: Instead of launching a such a buggy code, that too as a compulsory and default option for all users, why not listen to feedback and do proper testing?. Testing is always better than firefighting. Its never too late, roll back this soft launch, form language teams, test this for a few weeks thoroughly and then do project by project launches. ii)To Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Sanskrit, Oriya, Marathi, Assamese and Bengali folks on this list. Spread the word and test, test, test. File bug reports. This needs thorough testing in all OSes/browsers/connections by people who know the language. Learn from this experience and dont accept any untested products. Mayur has reported in one of the bugs that hi wiki users are reporting strange issues and has suggested making webfonts optional [1] A few weeks back i tried to warn the communities not to accept webfonts without proper testing. [2] What i feared has come to pass. Probably should have posted in all village pumps. ==Links== [1]https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33024 [2] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-November/005153.html On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 9:44 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: Also forgot to tell you. My college uses ONLY systems with Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6. Most students are from a Tamil background, and they read Tamil websites, Wikipedia very often. On 12/13/11, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, Pardon for a long mail, just unavoidable. We have seen the WebFonts roll out[0] last night to most Indic wikis except Malayalam and Tamil. We in Tamil Community felt WebFonts extension is just not ready for us. We would like to share on why we in Tamil community didnt chose webfonts and also what could work better in future for Indic communities during technology adoption. 1. *Unavailability of Quality Free fonts* :- During the development, our request for not setting the default font as a lower quality font was rejected citing it will defeat the purpose of extension.[1] The available fonts had issues and deploying the extension with those low quality fonts to everyone would not only defeat the purpose of extension, but also gives Tamil Wikipedia a bad image when people just cant read the fonts even though they had better fonts in system. (Just like how i18n team says people who see boxes will just simply close the window, we say giving these poor fonts will also lead to same thing and not help the cause, instead will also hurt those who have better fonts.). 2. *Quality of User Experience* :- We are a smaller wiki, we have a smaller reader base, but still we are ranked 7th most visited website in Tamil according to alexa[2]. Just like how no-nonsense / no-mediocrity is tolerated in any code that enters WMF cluster, any change which will affect the site's look and feel, user experience will have to be of highest standards and must be accepted by community. WebFonts were just not ready to enter Wikipedia, since it changes the UX for all the readers to help a potentially lower number of users who dont have Tamil fonts than the current existing reader base. *What we feel was wrong in WebFonts deployment* We have also been seeing the wikis where they have been rolled out and reporting issues. We ourselves are reporting issues inspite of not taking WebFonts, with the hope software just gets better and some day we can deploy them. Dont get us wrong, we are not against technology, we just need it in better form and are not in any urgency. (After all we at Ta wiki initiated an RFC and asked Webfonts even before the announcement was made). We would also like to mention some points which we feel i18n team could have done better for a smoother launch. 1. *Font
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects
hi, Curious: Is anybody testing this for mobile web? Shiju's report last week suggested an increase in traffic via mobile web, I think. I have started trying to read ml.wiki on my cell pointing my phone browser at ml.m.wikipedia.org and all I get are boxes right now. I'm using Opera Mini browser on a Nokia E63. Pradeep Handheld On 14/12/2011, Bala Jeyaraman sodabot...@gmail.com wrote: Have found a few more bugs in testing (other than the ones mentioned in the original mail) 1) Nepali - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33039 2) Sanskrit, Hindi and Nepali - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33038 3) Odiya - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33034 4) Sanskrit, Hindi - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33040 And they keep coming. At this rate me and srikanth should be paid per bug by the WMF. I am yet to touch Assamese, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali or Firefox 4.x, 6.x and IE 6.0, 8.0 and have only began Chrome testing. I am totally wiped for the day and quitting testing. Will try to cover the other cases tomorrow. Two thoughts at the end of a long day: i) To i18n team: Instead of launching a such a buggy code, that too as a compulsory and default option for all users, why not listen to feedback and do proper testing?. Testing is always better than firefighting. Its never too late, roll back this soft launch, form language teams, test this for a few weeks thoroughly and then do project by project launches. ii)To Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Sanskrit, Oriya, Marathi, Assamese and Bengali folks on this list. Spread the word and test, test, test. File bug reports. This needs thorough testing in all OSes/browsers/connections by people who know the language. Learn from this experience and dont accept any untested products. Mayur has reported in one of the bugs that hi wiki users are reporting strange issues and has suggested making webfonts optional [1] A few weeks back i tried to warn the communities not to accept webfonts without proper testing. [2] What i feared has come to pass. Probably should have posted in all village pumps. ==Links== [1]https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33024 [2] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-November/005153.html On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 9:44 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: Also forgot to tell you. My college uses ONLY systems with Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6. Most students are from a Tamil background, and they read Tamil websites, Wikipedia very often. On 12/13/11, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, Pardon for a long mail, just unavoidable. We have seen the WebFonts roll out[0] last night to most Indic wikis except Malayalam and Tamil. We in Tamil Community felt WebFonts extension is just not ready for us. We would like to share on why we in Tamil community didnt chose webfonts and also what could work better in future for Indic communities during technology adoption. 1. *Unavailability of Quality Free fonts* :- During the development, our request for not setting the default font as a lower quality font was rejected citing it will defeat the purpose of extension.[1] The available fonts had issues and deploying the extension with those low quality fonts to everyone would not only defeat the purpose of extension, but also gives Tamil Wikipedia a bad image when people just cant read the fonts even though they had better fonts in system. (Just like how i18n team says people who see boxes will just simply close the window, we say giving these poor fonts will also lead to same thing and not help the cause, instead will also hurt those who have better fonts.). 2. *Quality of User Experience* :- We are a smaller wiki, we have a smaller reader base, but still we are ranked 7th most visited website in Tamil according to alexa[2]. Just like how no-nonsense / no-mediocrity is tolerated in any code that enters WMF cluster, any change which will affect the site's look and feel, user experience will have to be of highest standards and must be accepted by community. WebFonts were just not ready to enter Wikipedia, since it changes the UX for all the readers to help a potentially lower number of users who dont have Tamil fonts than the current existing reader base. *What we feel was wrong in WebFonts deployment* We have also been seeing the wikis where they have been rolled out and reporting issues. We ourselves are reporting issues inspite of not taking WebFonts, with the hope software just gets better and some day we can deploy them. Dont get us wrong, we are not against technology, we just need it in better form and are not in any urgency. (After all we at Ta wiki initiated an RFC and asked Webfonts even before the announcement was made). We would also like to mention some points which we feel i18n team could have
