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Enable WebFonts for the Arabic projects
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Description

Author: mohahmwiki

Description:
This is a request for enabling WebFonts extension for the Arabic Wikipedia and its sister projects.


Version: wmf-deployment
Severity: enhancement

Details

Reference
bz41359

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Needs Triage.Nov 22 2014, 1:13 AM
bzimport set Reference to bz41359.

[Moving to "Wikimedia" as this request is about the configuration of the website, not about the code inside of the WebFonts extension.]

We have Arabic wikis for all projects: Wikipedia, wiktionary, wikibooks, wikinews, wikiquote, wikiversity and wikisource.

Can you please make sure that all communities are aware of this request, and not only Arabic Wikipedia?

I think it would be reasonable to take at least two weeks for feedback and discussion at those projects, so if there are no objections, we will enable all projects on Tuesday 13 November.

mohahmwiki wrote:

I have posted a notice on Arabic Wikinews, here http://ar.wikinews.org/wiki/ %D9%88%D9%8A%D9%83%D9%8A_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%AE%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B1:%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%86#.D8.AA.D9.81.D8.B9.D9.8A.D9.84_.D8.A7.D9.85.D8.AA.D8.AF.D8.A7.D8.AF_.D8.AE.D8.B7.D9.88.D8.B7_.D8.A7.D9.84.D9.88.D8.A8
There is only one editor who maintains the wiki and continues to add article there, he commented on my notice, saying that it is a good idea. Arabic Wikinews is the second most active wiki we have. I believe there is no objection to enabling WebFont extension.

Okay. Thanks for satisfying all requirements. Based on this information, we can pull deployment forward to 2012-10-31 (this Tuesday).

mohahmwiki wrote:

The following are 6 free Arabic fonts I suggest including in the WebFonts extenstion:

  1. Amiri
  2. Droid Arabic Kufi
  3. Droid Arabic Naskh
  4. Lateef
  5. Scheherazade
  6. Thabit

I have mentioned those fonts in my suggestion in the Arabic Wikipedia. The Fonts are available here : http://www.google.com/webfonts/earlyaccess

Nice to see more fonts, Alolita said they're looking into those released by Google. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/design/2012-October/000194.html
However, if I understand correctly this deployment request doesn't require those new fonts, so it's probably better if you put comment 7 in a new request?

Deployed, but no fonts for Arabic were enabled in WebFonts. See https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/30765/

mohahmwiki wrote:

The Amiri font has received positive comments in the discussion mentioned above on the Arabic Wikipedia. Now that the extension has been enabled, it remains to add fonts. The extension is of no use for now, because there are no fonts included. That's why I request the inclusion of the Amiri font as fast as possible, please.

mohahmwiki wrote:

As there are problems with including the fonts. I request the extension to be disabled, because it is of no use now on the AR wikis.

(In reply to comment #11)

As there are problems with including the fonts. I request the extension to be
disabled, because it is of no use now on the AR wikis.

The font has already been added; it will be live on your wiki, at worst, in the next bi-weekly update. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.21/Roadmap

mohahmwiki wrote:

If enabling/disabling the extension (fonts included) is not linked to updates. I still request that the extension be disabled until the the next update, as I said before, the existence of the extension now is meaningless.

Font added to all projects, except arwiki, which will have it by tomorrow.

mohahmwiki wrote:

The font should be named in Arabic, so it should be "الأميري". There is another request for adding five more fonts here: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41551

Hi, WebFonts might be causing long pages to overload; can it be made into a gadget?

(In reply to comment #16)

Hi, WebFonts might be causing long pages to overload; can it be made into a
gadget?

No, it's not possible. Can you please file a separate bug for this performance issue? Thanks.

mohahmwiki wrote:

Now, the webfont extension is displaying the Amiri webfont for all users, because of some rendering issues related to Windows perhaps, I suggest showing the webfonts only for users who selected them.

I’m not sure where to report this (under what component), but the webfonts extension provides only the regular style of the Amiri font but not the bold, and slanted styles, this causes the browser to synthesize bold and italic styles which looks extremely ugly and hardly usable.

(In reply to comment #19)

I’m not sure where to report this (under what component), but the webfonts
extension provides only the regular style of the Amiri font but not the bold,
and slanted styles, this causes the browser to synthesize bold and italic
styles which looks extremely ugly and hardly usable.

Is this the rendering problem Mohamed Ahmed mentioned in comment 18?
Could you please attach a screenshot of the problem that you're seeing and how it should look like instead? Thank you very much.

Created attachment 11341
Screenshot showing synthesized styles seen now

Attached:

لقطة_شاشة_من_2012-11-10_01:06:38.png (521×1 px, 147 KB)

Created attachment 11342
Screenshot showing true styles

This how it looks after I disabled the @font-face rule. The problem is that the @font-face rule looks like this

@font-face {

font-family: 'Amiri';
src: url('…');
src: local('Amiri'),
     url('…') format('woff'),
     url('…') format('truetype');
font-style: normal;

}

Thus only the normal style is made available, compare this with the CSS snippet provided with Amiri tarball, which makes all four styles available:

@font-face {

font-family: AmiriWeb;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: 400;
src: url('amiri-regular.eot?') format('eot'),
     url('amiri-regular.woff') format('woff'),
     url('amiri-regular.ttf')  format('truetype');

}

@font-face {

font-family: Amiri QuranWeb;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: 400;
src: url('amiri-quran.eot?') format('eot'),
     url('amiri-quran.woff') format('woff'),
     url('amiri-quran.ttf')  format('truetype');

}

@font-face {

font-family: AmiriWeb;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: 700;
src: url('amiri-bold.eot?') format('eot'),
     url('amiri-bold.woff') format('woff'),
     url('amiri-bold.ttf')  format('truetype');

}

@font-face {

font-family: AmiriWeb;
font-style: oblique;
font-weight: 400;
src: url('amiri-slanted.eot?') format('eot'),
     url('amiri-slanted.woff') format('woff'),
     url('amiri-slanted.ttf')  format('truetype');

}

@font-face {

font-family: AmiriWeb;
font-style: oblique;
font-weight: 700;
src: url('amiri-boldslanted.eot?') format('eot'),
     url('amiri-boldslanted.woff') format('woff'),
     url('amiri-boldslanted.ttf')  format('truetype');

}

I also recommend using this syntax over what is used now, see:
http://www.fontspring.com/blog/the-new-bulletproof-font-face-syntax

(but probably should keep 'src: local('Amiri')', so local font is used if available).

Attached:

لقطة_شاشة_من_2012-11-10_01:06:50.png (521×1 px, 145 KB)

Sorry, ignore the amiri-quran entry above it is specialized, yet unreleased version of Amiri.

Please make "Reset" option by default, as some users reported Amiri font to be unsuitable and other fonts not yet implemented.

(In reply to comment #24)

Please make "Reset" option by default, as some users reported Amiri font to be
unsuitable and other fonts not yet implemented.

Are you aware that bug 41940 has been fixed, implementing your fonts, and it will go live on Wednesday, December 5? https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.21/Roadmap#wmf5

(In reply to comment #24)

Please make "Reset" option by default, as some users reported Amiri font to be
unsuitable and other fonts not yet implemented.

Please file a new issue. This should not have been reopened. I'm predicting the
request will be denied/marked duplicate. See bug 30506.