Re: [PATCH RFC RESEND 0/4] Documentation: Web fonts for kernel documentation

[Bagas Sanjaya]

On Thu, Nov 02, 2023 at 10:35:47AM -0600, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
> So my immediate response to this is pretty uniformly negative.
> 
> - If you don't like serif, tweaking conf.py is easy enough without
>   pushing it on everybody else.

As local commit of course.

> 
> - I'm not thrilled about adding a bunch of binary font data to the
>   kernel, and suspect a lot of people would not feel that the bloat is
>   worth it.

MediaWiki project takes the same stance regarding web fonts:

> What about using webfonts?
>
> Webfonts is a system to deliver a font to users who do not have it installed.
> This involves having a user's browser download a font we provide, which causes
> additional resources to load and would have a negative impact on site
> performance (i.e. how fast pages load). This is particularly true for older
> browsers. In the future we may explore using webfonts, but for now this update
> provides greater readability and consistency while not degrading page load
> times.

Indeed, it's possible to achieve the same effect without resorting to web
fonts (as MediaWiki did), see [1].

> 
> - The licensing of the fonts is not fully free.

That was being discussed on the original RFC thread.

> 
> There's so much we can do to improve our documentation and access to it;
> messing around with web fonts seems - to me, at least - pretty low on
> the list.
> 
> I suppose I can ask people at the kernel summit session in a couple
> weeks to see if others feel differently.

OK, I want to hear about their opinion.

Thanks.

[1]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh

-- 
An old man doll... just what I always wanted! - Clara

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