Ryan, This is useful. Am I assuming accurately that you looked only at Latin language fonts focused on English. Did you consider Google webfonts too.
I would be interested in reusing your test criteria for other language fonts too. Thanks for your efforts so far. Best Alolita On Mar 3, 2014 11:57 AM, "Ryan Kaldari" <rkald...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > I spent most of Friday working on font evaluation with the designers. First > I presented them with a blind "taste test" of 10 potential body fonts. 7 of > them were FOSS fonts, 3 were commercial. Each one was used to render an > identical section of Lorem Ipsum text in a MedaWiki page. Each font was > given a "style" score based on readability, neutrality, and "authority" > (does the font look like it conveys reliable information). Interestingly, > of the 4 fonts that they preferred, 3 of them were the commercial fonts. > The only FOSS font that scored highly was Liberation Sans. > > Next, I did a blind technical evaluation. For this, I used each of the 10 > fonts to render combining diacritics, ties, and other "obscure" Unicode > features. Then I gave each font a score based on how many problems it had > rendering the characters. > > Finally, I researched the installation base of each font, i.e. what > operating systems it is installed on by default and also gave scores for > this. > > The results can be seen at > > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh/Font_choice#Body_font_evaluation > . > > The highest scoring fonts were: Arial, Helvetica, Helvetica Neue, and > Liberation Sans, so I'm going to suggest that all of these fonts be > included in the body stack, with the preference order based on the "style" > scores. Although Liberation Sans and Helvetica Neue tied on the style > score, I'm going to suggest that Liberation Sans go first since it is a > FOSS font: > > div#content { > font-family: Liberation Sans, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, > sans-serif; > } > > Additional feedback is welcome. > > Ryan Kaldari > > > > > On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 9:43 AM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) < > bjor...@wikimedia.org > > wrote: > > > I came across Gerrit change 79948[1] today, which makes "VectorBeta" > > use a pile of non-free fonts (with one free font thrown in at the end > > as a sop). Is this really the direction we want to go, considering > > that in many other areas we prefer to use free software whenever we > > can? > > > > Looking around a bit, I see this has been discussed in some "back > > corners"[2][3] (no offense intended), but not on this list and I don't > > see any place where free versus non-free was actually discussed rather > > than being brought up and then seemingly ignored. > > > > In case it helps, I did some searching through mediawiki/core and > > WMF-deployed extensions for font-family directives containing non-free > > fonts. The results are at > > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Anomie/font-family (use of > > non-staff account intentional). > > > > > > [1]: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/79948 > > [2]: > > > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_Design/Typography#Arial.3F_18136 > > [3]: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44394 > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
