Talk:SVG fonts

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[edit] Pretty please?

This is a great page . . . but . . . would it be possible for some dedicated soul to set (to use old-facshioned hot metal terminology) each of the typefaces on the page in that typeface? :s The point size would just have to be so that the style was clear, at least in general. There is the svg image but it's of quite low quality and only shows a few of the 120 typefaces listed. I think it would be fantastic to have a visually accurate list of GNU typefaces that could be used anywhere. I need an alternative to Arial Bold and only realised that this copyright thing was what was causing the problem I was having with my graphics. It's hard to figure out which of the 120 typefaces is closest. LookingGlass 16:18, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Arabic?

Do any of these fonts cover Arabic? AnonMoos 16:31, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

"DejaVu Sans" and "DejaVu Sans Mono" cover almost all Arabic script languages (I think Pashto isn't well supported though). --Khaled Hosny 12:04, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks; Arabic script support has improved, but there still seem to be some issues (see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Slogan-ar-wiki.svg etc.) AnonMoos 12:28, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
I think the font you used has smaller glyph widths than the dejavu font, thus the later got out of the boundaries. --Khaled Hosny 16:51, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Substitution

Is there any mechanism by which a substitution table can be used? For example, "Helvetica" to "Nimbus Sans L", "Palatino" or "Book Antiqua" to "URW Palladio L" Random832 14:59, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

If the SVG renderer uses fontconfig, then something similar is indeed possible. But this needs to be done across all redering servers. --Kjoonlee 12:30, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Liberation

Can the Liberation font family be added? This is a set of free (GPL + exception) fonts published by Red Hat that are metrically equivalent to common non-free fonts (e.g. Arial, etc.). Superm401 | Talk 03:40, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Nimbus Sans L and Nimbus Roman No9 L are already more than metrically equivalent; they're virtually identical. IMHO font substitution would be wiser. 90.234.98.121 12:28, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Oops that was me. --Kjoonlee 12:29, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Is there a common/always working Font?

Testing locally on a Windows system with Inkscape I seem to be in serious trouble: I can't find any font working with Inkscape/Commons/Opera. The fonts Inkscape offers to me (a long list) seems to have no counterpart in Commons (another long list). The suggestion here (just use 'sans') would satisfy me ... but Inkscape on Windows doesn't give me that option. What am I missing? Thanks for any hint - Deerwood 07:14, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Bitstream Vera Sans seems to work, I overlooked that one (and Opera didn't show it initially, but does after a reload), I still have to test it on Commons. Sorry for any hassles - Deerwood 05:20, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] More CJK fonts?

Is it possible to get more CJK fonts installed? The current CJK fonts are quite limiting. We only have 2 or 3 different fonts per language. The Japanese fonts (Kochi fonts) are not professionally made, the strokes are not spaced evenly. The Chinese fonts (AR PL fonts) seems to be designed for 90's low res computers, they turn bitmap-like at medium sizes that's not actual small. I tend to use the Korean fonts when possible because they are quite professionally made and more legible, but it is not always usable in Chinese/Japanese because missing characters not used in Korean, character variations, and punctuation differences. --Voidvector 21:19, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New fonts

Meta SVG fonts 2008.svg

As noted in Bug 8898, today two additional font packages (as I understand it) have been added. I have included them in a new version of the showcase file on the right, but would like it if someone else would take a look before including it on the page - preferably someone with knowledge of the indic languages, since the script samples were done by copy+paste from the Wiki-pages. I surely hope I got them right. --Hk kng 18:38, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Um, was this supposed to screw up font rendering in any way? Compare the images below: (1) uploaded before installation of new packages, (2) uploaded a few minutes ago. What's going on here? Fvasconcellos 15:42, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Font rendering comparison.png

Could you give links to the uploaded files? What I have seen on my home (Ubuntu) system is that font substitution will differ: text attributed as "Arial" for example was previously rendered with Nimbus Sans L, whereas after the installation of Liberation Sans this was used instead. but without a look at your source code, this is only a speculation. --Hk kng 18:32, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
They're Image:Moxifloxacin skeletal.svg and Image:Ciprofloxacin.svg. The font is indeed specified as Arial in both—should I start using font-family:Nimbus Sans L from now on, or maybe specify a font stack? I don't suppose font substitution can be changed so Nimbus Sans "trumps" Liberation Sans? Liberation may be metrically equivalent to Arial and Helvetica, but as a Helvetica clone (or an improved version of Helvetica, actually), Nimbus is much more appropriate as a free/libre substitute for either. Fvasconcellos 00:53, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Should I file a patch request? I don't mean to sound self-serving in any way, but I've uploaded nearly two thousand SVG images to Commons, nearly all of which depend on appropriate font substitution and accurate rendering. Can I expect anything to be done about this? :) Fvasconcellos 20:07, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Definitely, I'd say. If you look at Tim starling's reaction to Bug 15994, it does not seem he is too concerned about fontconfig issues. Well, considering how many problems there are with the servers at this point, it is at least understandable. --Hk kng 19:14, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] AR PL UMing (Chinese font set) cannot be rendered

AR PL UMing
AR PL UKai

I have tested several available (traditional) Chinese fonts and discovered that the SVG file applied the AR PL UMing isn't rendered in Wiki at all. (Update latency or file corruption isn't possible because I have changed to other fonts and re-uploaded it and it rendered well under the same image name.) I don't opt the other fonts because neither Serif (Mingti/UMing) nor calligraphic (UKai) fonts is suitable for small station name notation in a route map. But some of the important Chinese characters is absent in the old Sans (KaitiM) font. Making the remaining choice to be AR PL UMing set. Please help check if the AR PL UMing set installed correctly or something else causes the error. This is a long term problem with SVG Chinese font in Wiki. Thx -- (User:Sameboat in commons, en, zh) 222.166.160.221 01:11, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GENTIUM

Could the Gentium font be considered for the next upgrade? It's a free (ais) font that supports many alphabets, very elegant and aesthetic, and it's available in pretty much any linux distro. es:Drini 16:49, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Verdana?

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(diagrams)#Fonts contributors should think of using Verdana in SVG diagrams. But this font isn't listed here, and there's no explanation of why such a common web font is not available. Any hints? --HYanWong 17:11, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Verdana isn't a free font. It's Microsoft owned. Therefore it's English Wikipedia manual of style which should be fixed. es:Drini 00:57, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
The list at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(diagrams)#Fonts is a list of web-safe_fonts. The list here is a list of free fonts. Kaldari 16:04, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Complete font test

I added an image testing all of the fonts in MediaWiki's SVG engine. I know the image is huge but this page isn't accessed very often and I think it's more useful than a simple list (because most of these are not professional or well-known typeface names). There are a few errors because I generated the SVG semi-automatically, so feel free to correct anything or let me know.

Also, the non-Latin-alphabet fonts need type samples in their respective scripts, so if anyone can help with that please let me know. —Dease 02:38, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] "Recommended replacements" section needed

I'm thinking it would be a good idea to add a section to this page indicating recommended replacements for proprietary fonts. For example:

  • Times New Roman: Recommended replacement is DejaVu Serif, which is typographically very similar and has extensive Unicode support.
  • Arial: Recommended replacement is DejaVu Sans, which is typographically very similar and has extensive Unicode support.
  • Courier New: Recommended replacement is ???
  • etc.

Everyone okay with me adding this? Moxfyre 22:42, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Kochi font has a problem

Actually, Kochi font is not a free software font now. I think it should be uninstalled from the site. Instead of this, I think Ume font (梅フォント) is good for installing.--Widehawk 22:44, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Indic Bengali Font

Is it possiblr to add the SolaimanLipi.ttf (welknown good looking Bengali font) for Bengali.Jayantanth 10:36, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] When will SVG font rendering become broadly usable?

I uploaded an extremely basic and simple SVG file at Commons:File:Simple inverse relationship chart.svg which included a little bit of basic text in the "Times New Roman" font at a fairly large size, and the rendered result result in the full size view (660 × 584 pixels) was a little crude and not really properly anti-aliased (but legible), while the text in the thumbnail (180px wide) view was barely legible at all. I substituted the "DejaVu Serif" font as suggested above, and the full-size view was better (though still not great), but the thumbnail view was complete gibberish (a few random horizontal lines). To get the text to display legibly in thumbnail view in this ultra-simplistic bare-bones minimalistic SVG file, I had to convert text to vector paths (which resulting in increasing the size of the file about 50-fold).

When is the SVG text rendering of standard basic fonts going to be broadly usable over a range of resolutions (display sizes)? I have about a half-a-dozen PNG graphics which are actually derived from a vector source, but which I haven't uploaded as SVG because of the nightmare of dealing with text (since those graphics have long texts in multiple fonts, not just a few brief monosyllabic words all in the same font). AnonMoos 02:20, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm wondering the same thing. Is there at least a sandbox of sorts somewhere so that we can test the rendering of various fonts/sizes/scalings without making a mess somewhere else? 0x30114 17:22, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Non-supported font with fewest problems

I echo the suggestions at Talk:SVG fonts#When will SVG font rendering become broadly usable? and Talk:SVG fonts#"Recommended replacements" section needed.

I cannot find a single supported font in Inkscape 0.46, so I also propose a short list of non-supported fonts that have the least problems when rendered on Wikimedia sites. Maybe a link to a list of fonts that work, whether they are free or not?

I had been using Arial for some simple text images (listed above as having a recommended replacement of DejaVu Sans, but my Inkscape does not have that either). Arial on wikimedia sites get the last one or two characters trimmed off at some sizes. I suppose a font that renders smaller than it should would be preferable to one that overflows its bounding box. -84user 21:39, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

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