https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31936
--- Comment #2 from Srikanth Logic <srik....@gmail.com> 2011-10-30 06:39:37 UTC --- Comments specific to Tamil fonts, hence moving the comment for bug 30506 marked as dependent here. (In reply to comment #4) > 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? Yes, its the general (rather popular) opinion of the Tamil community. Infact not just Lohit, even the other newly added fonts are also not that good for reading. > 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? Agree, but not sure why a user will not take pain to see the "Font Help". > 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. 1. wgWebFontsEnabledByDefault = false and $wgDefaultUserOptions['webfontsEnable'] = false on one hand seems to best option, in the sense, we might not loose anon readers(who are by far largest in reader base) due to font change and strain due to enabling the extension and also give logged in users who wish to have the extra facility. > 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. Agree. I dont think we must wait for good fonts. Infact there is atleast 1 admin who wanted in few hours of calling for community concensus since he didnt have font support on his college machine running CentOS and he cant do anything since he is non admin. > 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. There is a thin line here. Webfonts main intention is to increase reader base, who close the window upon seeing boxes.Adding webfonts to Tamil wikiprojects is intended to do the same, increase reader base. But due to non-availability of quality fonts, it gives a "not-so-good" look and feel for users who already have better fonts. If we enable webfonts, they *may* stop coming and readerbase might decrease it. Having Webfonts and not having a default font gives a chance to increase reader base,(people with boxes have an option and can be converted to readers) at the same time doing nothing bad to existing userbase. The purpose of any software is to cater to increase in overall experience, not decrease in experience for larger userbase, to add better experience to relatively smaller base. (Most people who visit tamil wikipedia, come from tamil search, blogs which means they already have fonts :), but there might be people who used tamil wikipedia on own devices, and try to access sites on new device, in which case webfonts might be needed). Also i have no idea if webfonts can be enabler in mobile devices, which means we should have it to reach masses. > ps: I see that the font help page in Tamil wiki is outdated. Thanks, we are just trying to update typing help page, we will add this too. To Sum it up, let me put the options in the order of community preference. 1. Enable Webfonts to all, with no default font. This will try to increase readerbase without compromising existing readerbase. So best from community PoV 2. Enable Webfonts only to logged in users with a default preference as false, so users who want fonts(say that 1 admin) alone has access and rest feel no difference. This will not increase readerbase, but will help logged in users, also can be added as one other reason to create an account. 3. Do Nothing, close the bug and wait for better fonts for some more months. (I dont prefer this) -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are the assignee for the bug. You are on the CC list for the bug. _______________________________________________ Wikibugs-l mailing list Wikibugs-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikibugs-l
