On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 11:42 AM, Bartosz Dziewoński <[email protected]>wrote:
> I have merged the Gerrit change (https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/ > r/#/c/124475/), > restoring the body font to "sans-serif". The heading font is unchanged for > now. > > I've read the entire wikitech-l thread (89 emails as of writing) and > pondered this carefully. My summary of the situation is: > > * This font stack, according to WMF Design, only provides real > improvements for Macs (~6% of Wikimedia sites visitors per > <http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/ > SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm>) > and should be (nearly) identical to defaults for other systems. > However, it causes major rendering issues for an unspecified number > of Windows and Linux users (especially with, respectively, Helvetica > and Nimbus Sans L; see both open and closed dependencies of bug > 63549). > * This font stack also apparently causes issues with non-Latin-script > languages (not very well-specified ones, though; more bug reports > like bug 63817 would be welcome); it's serious enough for at least > one affected Wikimedia wiki (the Japanese Wikipedia) to have already > reset the stack to "sans-serif". This might affect the serif heading > fonts more than the sans-serif body fonts (again, more precise > reports needed). > * The wikitech-l discussion, as well as various on-wiki discussions > (e.g. on WP:VPT on the English Wikipedia) have been overwhelmingly > in favor of restoring the plain "sans-serif" font definition. > * Orthogonally to these issues, all other aspects of the typography > refresh have been generally considered successful and minor problems > with them have been quickly fixed. > > Based on the points above and my own common sense I think this should > be merged, and a similar follow-up for serif heading fonts might also > be necessary (but that's obviously a lower-severity problem, there > isn't that much text in headings). Steven, I'm sorry, but I'm > overriding your -2. > > (I'm posting this on the Gerrit change > <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/124475/>, on the tracking bug > <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63549> and in the > wikitech-l thread. Please reply on wikitech-l.) > Replicating what I wrote on the patch: Bartosz: thanks for the considered, factual take on the matter. I appreciate you taking the time to read up on everything though obviously I disagree about Nimbus Sans L and Helvetica Neue not being improvements. I would caution against being English Wikipedia centric in talking about user acceptance of the new typography. Spanish Wikipedia is far less aligned against it ( https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votaciones/2014/Sobre_la_actualizaci%C3%B3n_tipogr%C3%A1fica) and other wikis (German, French) have declined to open a vote on the matter while they wait for continued tweaks from us. I posted in the other thread Erwin started about our plan for dealing with serifs in non-Latin languages. In any case, I think this is acceptable for now since we can always submit a new patch again later that puts a free/libre font first in addition to the current stack being reverted. Either way we need to do more research and testing to accomplish that, or even explore webfonts more. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
