Monday, March 19, 2012

#WebFonts on #Wikisource

As the #MediaWiki Webfonts extension has been implemented on the English language Wikisource, it provides all kinds of opportunities. What it does require is that you understand how things work.

There are a few things that are important:
  • All web fonts are available where WebFonts is enabled
  • When a text is properly tagged and a font exists the web font will be triggered
  • People easily recognise different languages and different scripts. It is computers and search engines that really benefit from proper tagging. By inference our public does.
  • As more freely licensed fonts become available for more scripts, including historic languages and scripts, the user experience of projects like Wikisource and Wiktionary will greatly improve
The Amiri font, a wonderful font for the Arabic script, recently became available in WebFonts. As it is so much prettier then the default font that exists on so many computers, I added the necessary tags to trigger Amiri as an example on one article in en.wikisource. What made my day is that the Wikisourcerers improved on what I did and have the English and Arabic text of the national anthem of Saudi Arabia side by side.


Thanks,
      GerardM

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