Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Bala Jeyaraman]

*
*
*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
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Srikanth Ramakrishnan]

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  wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 07:33, Subhashish Panigrahi
> wrote:
>
>> 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

[Srikanth Lakshmanan]

On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 07:33, Subhashish Panigrahi
wrote:

> 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

[Subhashish Panigrahi]

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) 

> Praveen Prakash +1
>
>
> On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 09:46, Praveen Prakash 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  wrote:
>> > On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 8:49 AM, Praveen Prakash 
>> > 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
>> >>  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  wrote:
>> >>> > On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan
>> >>> > wrote:
>> >>> >
>> >>> >> 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
>> > Wikimediain

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[വിശ്വപ്രഭ]

Praveen Prakash +1

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 09:46, Praveen Prakash  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  wrote:
> > On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 8:49 AM, Praveen Prakash 
> > 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
> >>  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  wrote:
> >>> > On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan
> >>> > wrote:
> >>> >
> >>> >> 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 :talk<
> http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Praveenp>
>
> ___
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> To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing pr

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Praveen Prakash]

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  wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 8:49 AM, Praveen Prakash 
> 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
>>  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  wrote:
>>> > On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan
>>> > wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> 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
>>
>>
>>
>> ___
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>> 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 
:talk

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Anivar Aravind]

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 8:49 AM, Praveen Prakash  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
>  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  wrote:
>> > On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> >> 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
>
>
>
> ___
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> 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

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Praveen Prakash]

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  wrote:
> > On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan
> > wrote:
> >
> >> 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
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Srikanth Ramakrishnan]

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  wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan
> wrote:
>
>> 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

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Ravishankar]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan wrote:

> 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
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Ravishankar]

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
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Srikanth Lakshmanan]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 12:52, Erik Moeller  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
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Bala Jeyaraman]

 *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  wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 10:45 PM, Bala Jeyaraman 
> 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
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Erik Moeller]

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 10:45 PM, Bala Jeyaraman  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

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Srikanth Lakshmanan]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 12:03, Santhosh Thottingal <
santhosh.thottin...@gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>

The comments were for the entire duration of last few months, several
debates. 2 days of firefighting doesn't mean that whatever that was done
from start were correct and we pointing out mistakes is wrong. If you cant
accept negative feedback, no room for improvement.


>  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.
>

When I meant safeguarding, I meant safeguarding from a horrible launch.
It doesn't matter if the bugs are font related / browser bugs, when
something goes live on Wikipedia and made *default* to millions of readers,
it has to be SOLID. No compromises on quality. Many Indic wikipedias are
probably also technology resource for the language itself. We need to
maintain the quality. With all the work done, I would still say its a
horrible launch, if the hinting issue exist in Windows XP for atleast 4
languages even though its beyond your control to fix it. Didn't we ask not
to make to the feature mandatory and default (which was very much in your
control) and didn't we debate it over for days? Lets not go back doing
useless post-mortem since we don't think there are no plans of rollback /
discussion on those topics, how much ever merit was there on our side. I
would still claim we safeguarded Tamil Wikipedia and not think
as exaggeration at all. "Dark Launch" is a win-win and I suggest you do
everything possible to have it for future releases.


> Please be constructive and help us as you were doing. We deserve some
> appreciation for what we are doing.
>

Please go and read the first paragraph here
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-i18n/2011-December/000360.html


I do hope we were adequately constructive by reporting bugs even if it
doesnt impact us since it was not rolled out to Tamil anyway. To be very
frank, I get this thought why several of my reports(not just i18n bugs)
dont get comments / even acknowledgement in time, even though people see
it. I feel am wasting my time testing out, but still do it because there
are few people who even report things.

-- 
Regards
Srikanth.L
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[BalaSundaraRaman]

>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 
>To: Wikimedia India Community list  
>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  
>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 
>>>To: Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia. 
>>> 
>>>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 
>>>ran

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Bala Jeyaraman]

*  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
>  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
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Santhosh Thottingal]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Srikanth Lakshmanan
 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

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Srikanth Lakshmanan]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 10:48, Ravishankar  wrote:

> Hi Bala and Srikanth,
>
> Thank you for the informative report.
>
> I appreciate your role in coordinating, communicating lot of tech issues
> on behalf of Tamil Wikipedia community and many other budding Indic
> language communities which don't have face and voice yet.
>

Thank you, happy that some WikiGnome activities I do is appreciated :)

I hate that you are called "critics" when you are taking every effort to
> guide, bug test and fix the issues.
>

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. But i18n really like our bug reports :) , doesnt matter
if we have differences of opinion.


>
> From
>
>
> 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.
>
> I think the deploy is keyword here and I sincerely hope, the "dark
launches" mentioned the thread will come soon and become the norm. 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.

-- 
Regards
Srikanth.L
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Ravishankar]

Hi Bala and Srikanth,

Thank you for the informative report.

I appreciate your role in coordinating, communicating lot of tech issues on
behalf of Tamil Wikipedia community and many other budding Indic language
communities which don't have face and voice yet.

I hate that you are called "critics" when you are taking every effort to
guide, bug test and fix the issues.

From

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.

Ravi



On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 9:17 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan 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.
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Barry Newstead]

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 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 
> *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 hin

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[BalaSundaraRaman]

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 
>To: Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia. 
> 
>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

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Surya Prakash]

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://about.me/suryaceg



On 14 December 2011 11:18, Pradeep Mohandas 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  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  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 a

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Srikanth Ramakrishnan]

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  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  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  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
>>> 

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Pradeep Mohandas]

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  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  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

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Pradeep Mohandas]

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  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  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 

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Bala Jeyaraman]

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  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 issu

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Srikanth Ramakrishnan]

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  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 engageme

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Srikanth Ramakrishnan]

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  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 I

[Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

[Srikanth Lakshmanan]

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 coming on Dec 12, didnt know what was coming, any further details.
Worse, Even Indic Consultant was not having clear information. Why this
lack of transparency? Community is more than willing to help, if only they
are informed. Even though we did not take up WebFonts, we have spent time
to help making it better.

 And th