So I'll just make a few brief, general points: * It might be nice for the design folks to weigh in here with their thoughts on font selection.
* We traditionally didn't specify a lot of fonts at all, meaning you got whatever default fonts were configured on your system: thus, non-free fonts like Arial or Helvetica for the vast majority of visitors. * Where we do specify non-free fonts among the font-family lists, remember we don't ship those fonts -- they are used only if they are present and another font doesn't outrank them. * Where we do ship fonts (via UniversalLanguageSelector/WebFonts) they are free fonts. * Font selection can be completely overridden via CSS; if someone has the interest one could create a Gadget that lets you totally customize your font experience in a user-friendly way. I'll also add this: * It would be _awesome_ if we sponsored creation or maintenance of good free base fonts for body and header text, and used those consistently. But that's not a trivial endeavor; what effort has been spent on custom fonts has been for reasons of language support. -- brion On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 1:18 PM, MZMcBride <z...@mzmcbride.com> wrote: > Brad Jorsch (Anomie) wrote: > >On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 12:52 PM, MZMcBride <z...@mzmcbride.com> wrote: > >> There's an open question in my mind as to what constitutes a "non-free > >>font," > > > >In this context, I mean "non-free" in the context of libre rather than > >gratis.[1] > > > >[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre > > Right. The "libre" part is what I consider a legal issue, though I think I > understand more clearly now that you're talking about technical policy > here. > > >There are a number of fonts that can be downloaded for free (gratis) > >but are under terms along the lines of a CC -NC or -ND license, and > >there are more that are distributed with various popular operating > >systems so many people already have them for "free" in the loosest > >sense. I'm not counting these as free here. > > Thank you for clarifying this point. It might be helpful to have a list of > gratis/libre fonts and a list of gratis/non-libre fonts, if such lists > don't exist already. > > As far as I know, MediaWiki (core) has historically preferred to specify > nothing more than sans-serif. There now seems to be a trend away from this. > > <https://www.wikimedia.org/wiki/Guiding_principles#Freedom_and_open_source > > > is a citation for my earlier claim that Wikimedia prefers free to > non-free. Nemo_bis pointed me toward this related discussion as well: > <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/design/2012-October/000191.html>. > > MZMcBride > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
