Last modified: 2014-03-21 12:42:25 UTC
Please have a look at the following bug report:https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53940 The important excerpts from this bug reports are the following: "[...] there is an issue with the Tigrinya and arabic language font. If you read (look at) articles containing rhe Tigrinya language (for example https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrea and https://ti.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%8A%A4%E1%88%AD%E1%89%B5%E1%88%AB ) it seems like the site is loading a thinner font, then the font is disappearing and a bigger font appears. Surprisingly this issue doesn't appear [on one article?] in the english wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrea The font-reloading also happens to the arabic language, see the same articles above. Furthermore there is an issue in ti.wikipedia.org: untranslated english text like "Log in", "create account" etc. is not using wikipedias default font but apparently the (ugly) latin letters from the ti-font."
Languages am and ti has AbyssinicaSIL(http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=abyssinicasil) as the webfonts from 2011-05-18. This font is embedded in the wiki pages. When a user first time visit a page, and not having this font installed locally, browser will download it only once, you will see a flash in the screen because of re-rendering(noticeable depending on bandwidth and system speed etc). I cannot judge the quality of the font, but if this default preference does not match with your preference you may change it as explained here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/UniversalLanguageSelector We try to use a good quality free licensed font, if you happen to know alternate font better that this font, please discuss with ti wiki community and let us know.
(In reply to comment #1) > Languages am and ti has > AbyssinicaSIL(http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page. > php?site_id=nrsi&id=abyssinicasil) > as the webfonts from 2011-05-18. This font is embedded in the wiki pages. > When > a user first time visit a page, and not having this font installed locally, > browser will download it only once, you will see a flash in the screen > because > of re-rendering(noticeable depending on bandwidth and system speed etc). > > I cannot judge the quality of the font, but if this default preference does > not > match with your preference you may change it as explained here: > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/UniversalLanguageSelector > > We try to use a good quality free licensed font, if you happen to know > alternate font better that this font, please discuss with ti wiki community > and > let us know. That can't be the whole answer. Look how the font in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrea is different than in https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrea , in the english article this issue does not occure.
(In reply to comment #2) > That can't be the whole answer. Look how the font in > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrea is different than in > https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrea , in the english article this issue > does > not occure. In my machine, I see squares for Ethiopic script in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrea(because that text is not marked with lang attribute, so no webfont applies). In https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrea I see text using AbyssinicaSIL. Better than squares. But like I said, I don't know the script and language, so I don't have better answer here. You may have a better locally installed font.
Created attachment 13326 [details] Screenshot Is this the same problem that can be seen in the table at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph#Arabic_variants (reported in https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29&oldid=573623991#Arabic_fonts ) or should that be a separate report? The arabic characters are bigger than the table cells, in Firefox 23 and Google Chrome 29.
(In reply to comment #4) > Is this the same problem that can be seen in the table at > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph#Arabic_variants (reported in > https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia: > Village_pump_%28technical%29&oldid=573623991#Arabic_fonts > ) or should that be a separate report? The arabic characters are bigger than > the table cells, in Firefox 23 and Google Chrome 29. Not really, but it might be all related to the font file.
This shouldn't happen any longer for two reasons: 1. If you have a local Ethiopic font on your machine, it should be used by default and not replaced with a web font, because we added a "tofu detection" feature (see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_Selector/WebFonts ). For users who don't have any Ethiopic on their machines, an ugly font is better than squares. According to our metrics (I'll publish precise numbers next week) Ethiopic fonts are among the least commonly supported. 2. At this point Webfonts are disabled by default, so this shouldn't happen in any language unless you enable it from the gear icon. They maybe re-enabled by default in the future. Also, I studied this script and I believe that the Abyssinica font is very good, but that's a matter for separate discussion. And as for untranslated messages appearing with an "ugly" English font - the best solution for that is to translate them, but tofu detection prevents that anyway. So this is basically a WONTFIX, because the problems are supposed to be addressed. If something happens that still bothers you, please reopen with an explanation.
I can not further reconstruct the mentioned behaviour so the bug seems to be fixed. I can not tell if this is due to changes in Wikipedia, my web browser or my installed fonts.
[resetting to Amir's bug resolution WONTFIX]
