https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30506

--- Comment #4 from Santhosh Thottingal <[email protected]> 
2011-10-30 05:54:46 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #3)
> We in Tamil Wikipedia want Webfonts extension but the free fonts that are
> included as part are poorer than what fonts most people(including anons) who
> are visiting us already have.So if we set any of the fonts as default, that
> would be a giving like delivering "bad experience fontwise" to users who
> already have better fonts on system and they have to take the pain of 
> resetting
> manually which most wont be aware off.
> So for the default user nothing changes,

Lohit Tamil is the default font of all the GNU/Linux distros I am familiar
with. So are you saying that Lohit is not good for a default Tamil wiki
reading? Is it a general opinion of Tamil community?

> if one sees boxes / issues with font rendering, the font help page will point
> to choose webfont 

One of the objective of this extension is to avoid any such 'Can't you see the
content? click here" banners seen in many non-latin wikis. Having the webfonts
extension and still showing it defeat the purpose of the extension.

Do you think users seeing square  or question marks everywhere will take pain
to find out an English word "Font Help"  from the page?

> and those people alone would benefit out of webfont and
> others neednt know the difference / existance of webfont at all

They will know the existence since every page has top menu, and help page to
use webfonts if you don't see Tamil. We don't have a technique to identify
whether the user has fonts already and then showing the tool. Browsers won't
spy the users local computer.

We have a setting -  $wgWebFontsEnabledByDefault; if set to false, this will
provide webfonts extension only to logged in users. And for anonymous users,
there is no webfonts. Then there is another option -
$wgDefaultUserOptions['webfontsEnable'] , if set false, this will not enable
webfonts for for logged in users, unless the manually select it using
Preferences page.


If the existing fonts are not good enough for a reasonable Tamil reading,  Is
it better to wait till we have good fonts? According to you all the fonts we 
give(Added in Bug 31889)  bad experience and most people, including anons has
better proprietary fonts. And I know that unlike any Indic languages, Tamil has
better support in any OS, browser. The issue Tamil is having is not 
non-availability of fonts, but non availability of good free licensed fonts.
And whether the fonts are good or bad is quite subjective topic.

So I am yet to get convinced that Tamil should have a setting to avoid a
default font. Similarly if Tamil community think that all free licensed fonts
we have is not good enough for reasonable Tamil reading, I am wondering why we
should have these fonts in Webfonts extension.

I appreciate with your intention of best Tamil reading with best free licensed
font for Tamil wiki projects.

ps: I see that the font help page in Tamil wiki is outdated.

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