Needs reviewing first

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)

(In reply to comment #0)

We have tested the WebFonts extension on translatewiki.net and would like to
enable the extension on all Tamil wiki projects
(ta.wikipedia,ta.wikinews,ta.wikisource,ta.wiktionary,ta.wikibooks,ta.wikiquote)

Since we are in discussion about configuration modes and Tamil wiki community is averse to change if they see something break, when its ready to get enabled, enable ONLY on ta.wikibooks,ta.wikisource. I will file another bug after hearing from community for the other highly active projects

Guys, you're finding problems for a solution.

WebFonts is mainly created to hugely improve *computer illiterate's reading experience*. We know that editors are often way better schooled and more computer literate, so that they have the skills to choose a font of their liking and install that on their computer. However, those that have not, will never, ever get a proper reading experience in the above scenario. That's just wrong, i.e. you/we MediaWiki veterans are being elitists here, and you're killing your pool of potential contributors.

(In reply to comment #4)

Guys, you're finding problems for a solution.

WebFonts is mainly created to hugely improve *computer illiterate's reading
experience*. We know that editors are often way better schooled and more
computer literate, so that they have the skills to choose a font of their
liking and install that on their computer. However, those that have not, will
never, ever get a proper reading experience in the above scenario. That's just
wrong, i.e. you/we MediaWiki veterans are being elitists here, and you're
killing your pool of potential contributors.

There is a problem here in understanding.Let me expand each preference with reason.

1. Enable Webfonts to all, with no default font. This will try to increase

readerbase without compromising existing readerbase. So best from community PoV

Any technological change must be progressive in nature. If WebFonts is enabled with a default font, its going 2 steps back giving a poorer font for 99% of existing readerbase(includes anons and computer illiterates who have fonts installed and may not be aware the poorer font is due to Webfonts,there is a option to turn it off) who have better fonts for the sake of accommodating 1%. So essentially there is a concern on loosing some of the readers.

The 1% neednt be a computer literate to select a font from drop down. http://stats.grok.se/ta/201110/Wikipedia:Font_help is ranked 20 on site traffic, so it isnt true that all those people close the page upon seeing squares.Now if WebFonts is installed without default font, the Font help page will say choose the font on browser to read.

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.

Choosing this option would mean, we dont affect the experience of anon-readers, but editors have a choice to use WebFonts. Please note there are student-editors who use lab machines and not always have rights to install fonts. The intent of asking only for logged users is not elitist. Its in the best interest of pool of potential contributors. When most of them have a better font, why feed them inferior font and shy them away?

Some Personal thoughts, we could discuss below thing when we meet at conference :)

*computer illiterate's reading experience* --> Please assume some intelligence for the normal literate's who are computer illiterates. To give a context, due to various issues which caused a late unicode adoption for Tamil, most Tamil users know they may need to have site specific fonts(there are still those non unicode sites) and have been installing fonts, and if we give them an option and ask them to choose from dropdown instead of setting it default, it wont be pain for them.

While am not elitist,at the risk of sounding politically incorrect I would say this :- Potential contributors will find their way around and people have always found their way till now.So while WebFonts will help more people read, lets not overshoot and say, not having WebFonts / not setting a default font would mean killing potential contributors.

Some more debate happened in the meanwhile. http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2011/11/freely-licensed-fonts-are-ugly-now-what.html

i18n team is not ready to give what we asked for and is insisting on giving us what they have in a form in which they believe the extension must work. we believe, they are going to use this bug as an excuse to over ride community requirement and consensus. We dont want a party to a "one size fits all solution" which completely ignores community requirements. We are open to discussion at the Wiki conference / Tamil Wikipedia Embassy page ( http://tawp.in/r/5an ) should there be a need for further discussion with change in line of thought.

Closing the bug