Template talk:IPA fonts

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This is a list of fonts to use in a style attribute for fixing the display of International Phonetic Alphabet in MS Internet Explorer 6. See Template talk:IPA for more information.


Is there so much need for a nested template? Etz Haim 02:40, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I thought this would let you use IPA fonts in style attributes for TABLEs or DIVs, and remain consistent with Template:IPA. Hiding it one or two clicks further away might help avoid thoughtless edits, too. —Michael Z. 23:48, 2005 Jan 12 (UTC)

Template:IPA has been modified so that it should only apply the font spec in MSIE6/Win. Nevertheless, please don't remove the Mac-only Lucida Grande font from Template:IPA fonts, because it can be used in other contexts. —Michael Z. 21:08, 2005 Jan 14 (UTC) My bad. It didn't work. —Michael Z. 23:29, 2005 Jan 14 (UTC) I have since found another way to make it work. —Michael Z. 2005-02-7 17:37 Z

Why list Mac fonts at all? The code in Template:IPA should ensure only MSIE/Win applies the template. Or does MSIE/Mac suffer from the same CSS bug? Jordi·✆ 10:48, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Well, Template:IPA fonts could be used in another context, like in the the style attribute of a table or DIV, without being hidden from MSIE/Win. But in practice, I haven't seen a single instance where this is necessary. MSIE/Mac isn't quite as Unicode savvy as MSIE/Win, I think, but no one seems to care (I use Safari/Mac). Is there a Windows version of "Lucida Grande"? If not, go ahead and remove it. —Michael Z. 2005-03-28 16:56 Z
Even if it were used, the hack used should make sure the fonts are only applied to MSIE. So Mac users still won't see Lucida Grande. And yes, it can be installed on Windows, but since Lucida Sans Unicode contains the same data there's no reason to. Jordi·✆ 17:34, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Are you sure they're the same? Lucida Grande displays all of the Early Cyrillic characters for me, which Windows users seem to be unable to see (but maybe that's just Win users with stock fonts; I don't have Lucida Sans Unicode to check). —Michael Z. 2005-03-28 17:44 Z

Contents

[edit] Order of fonts

The order as of right now is:

Lucida Grande, Arial Unicode MS, Lucida Sans Unicode, Gentium, Code2000

I was under the impression that the fonts are considered in the order given, so if you have Arial Unicode MS installed, that font is used and the rest ignored. Should the list therefore not be in the reverse order, so that Gentium and Code2000, the more "exotic" fonts, are checked first? --Phil | Talk 12:51, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

Gentium and Code2000 are serif fonts, and don't really look right on Wikipedia. So we'd rather see the sans-serif fonts, if you have those installed, and the others are fall-backs in case you don't. Almost everyone will have Arial Unicode MS (comes with WinXP, and maybe others), so that will normally be chosen.
Note that as used in Template:IPA (docs), this only has any effect on MSIE6/Windows. It's hidden from other browsers, which all seem smart enough to choose a useful font on their own.
Arial Unicode MS actually has one bug in IPA usage: it incorrectly renders double-combining diacritics (see IPA in Unicode#Other symbols). But another user insisted it go first, and I don't use Windows so I conceded the point. —Michael Z. 2005-02-7 14:51 Z
Maybe I didn't say it right? My point is that I installed Gentium and Code2000 because they work better than AUMS, so obviously I (using IE because that's what's installed on this machine for me) want those to come up first; I assume that anybody else who has gone to the bother of installing them on a Windows machine will agree with me. --Phil | Talk 17:00, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I see. Apart from the double-combining diacritics, us there anything else that works better about those fonts for IPA characters? I'm just going to suggest that Arial Unicode MS and Lucida Sans Unicode look better with WP's design. I went to the trouble to figure out how to hide the font declaration from other browsers, specifically because Gentium looked so tiny, crabby, and out of place at WP's default font size. So the font choice here no longer affects me and I don't mind if you change it.
I'll just ask you to leave Lucida Grande first. It comes on Macs only, so it won't affect you. And if someone uses this template alone, LG has a wider character range than any of these except Code2000, and it looks better. —Michael Z. 2005-02-7 17:35 Z

[edit] Deleting Gentium for wider applicability

I've been planning to create a template similar to Template:IPA, for displaying Early Cyrillic characters. Turns out, it would be identical to this, except that it couldn't include Gentium font, which only has Cyrillic characters for the Russian language. Apart from Gentium, all the fonts here include a very wide range of characters, and could be used for many more applications than just IPA. This would be much easier to use and maintain than a half-dozen similar templates for IPA, Polytonic Greek, Early Cyrillic, etc. Anyone object if I delete Gentium from the font spec? —Michael Z. 2005-02-8 02:59 Z

Actually I think you'd be better defining a new template: label the content correctly instead of bodging it up with something else. I'm not particularly happy about using IPA fonts for the {{unicode}} template: we should be specifying fonts which are "tuned" for the purpose, so we should use fonts with the widest coverage for {{unicode}} and fonts with the best IPA coverage for this one. As stated above, I installed Gentium specifically to get around the problems with Arial Unicode MS: I would therefore like it to stay here. --Phil | Talk 09:35, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
I wasn't aware of Template:Unicode; I was going to suggest using this template for that purpose. Gentium is definitely not suitable for that one. Does Arial Unicode MS have problems other than the broken rendering of double-combining diacritics?
Others don't like using a serif font like Gentium in WP, so you may see some resistance. It makes the page looks confusing and ugly when people use Template:IPA for IPA text blocks containing IPA-range characters, but leave it out in other IPA blocks that have only Latin characters. (it should be used consistently, but often isn't.)
You seem to be choosing Gentium first out of a personal preference for it. Don't sweat the template details too much, just add something like the following into User:Phil Boswell/monobook.css.
 .IPA { font-family: Gentium, TITUS Cyberbit, Code2000, serif; }


—Michael Z. 2005-02-8 15:34 Z

[edit] Fonts reordered

Since the existing font order forced many broken glyphs across the Wikipedia (example: Dash), I have reordered the fonts based on the number of glyphs they actually contain, as the existing order forced less compatible fonts to be used even when better fonts were available. Exceptions to this are the Mac font Lucida Grande, which unfortunately is also the name of a rather Unicode-broken Windows font so I placed it last, and Arial Unicode MS, which contains too many bugs to be ever preferred. Please do not re-order the list before first checking for broken display in articles using the Unicode or IPA templates. Jordi·✆ 23:25, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This font list was developed strictly to display IPA, and not all languages and symbols. Since IPA is relatively common and only requires a limited range of characters, it's easy to develop a longer list of fonts, and consequently have a better chance of displaying IPA successfully on any particular Windows installation. And you can also start the list with sans-serif fonts, so it doesn't look bad with monobook.css.
Template:Unicode should have its own font list, for use where a very wide range of characters is needed (Gentium must go). I know people have started using Template:IPA for this purpose, but we should head them off at the pass.
If Lucida Grande causes problems, then just drop that one from the list. It's a Mac system font, and Mac browsers won't use the font-spec in Template:IPA or Template:Unicode, anyway. —Michael Z. 2005-02-11 00:20 Z
Since only one broken browser (MSIE) requires this font declaration in the first place, why not just add a rule for .ipa (and .unicode) to the MSIE-specific stylesheet, letting nonbroken browsers (Opera, Mozilla, Safari etc.) do their work normally?
Basically, leave the classes empty for all browsers except MSIE. This would save a lot of trouble. Jordi·✆ 00:36, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I love it! Know anyone who has access to those style sheets and won't ignore our requests? —Michael Z. 2005-02-11 00:47 Z
Yes, I know someone who will do it. But first can someone explain something to me. The purpose of this template is to fix IPA display for the most common computer configuration (Xp with MSIE). When I try to access Wikipedia with that configuration, the fact that other fonts are declared before Arial Unicode MS just breaks the display. It is actually worse than if no font were specified. Why have other fonts been given priority over the only one that works? — Chameleon 16:37, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The purpose of the list and order thereof is that fonts which display IPA characters best are listed first, because IE will use the first listed font it can find to display the characters. AFAIK if a font earlier in the list is not installed, IE will ignore it and try the next one. Almost all XP/IE installations include Arial Unicode MS, so it is put at the end as a fall-back. If this is not happening in your experience, then what is? --Phil | Talk June 28, 2005 17:18 (UTC)
I find that the only font that works is Arial Unicode MS. Let's investigate...
Test table
Force 'Arial Unicode MS' /'ðɪs ɪz ə tɹɑːns'kɹɪpʃən juːzɪŋ aɪpiː'eɪ/
Allow default /'ðɪs ɪz ə tɹɑːns'kɹɪpʃən juːzɪŋ aɪpiː'eɪ/
Force 'Bitstream Cyberbit' /'ðɪs ɪz ə tɹɑːns'kɹɪpʃən 'juːzɪŋ aɪpiː'eɪ/

Here's a screenshot of how this table displays on my computer:

Image:Temp IPA screenshot.png

As you can see, it's all fine in Firefox, with Arial Unicode MS looking the tidiest. In IE, Bitstream Cyberbit is a total mess. That's what I see with {{IPA_fonts}}, because Bitstream Cyberbit is specified before Arial Unicode MS. — Chameleon 28 June 2005 18:15 (UTC)

So you're saying we should stop using MSIE? (sorry—I couldn't resist) —Michael Z. 2005-06-28 19:55 Z
Well, yeah, we should stop using IE. But so that people still using IE can see IPA correctly, we need to make sure that Bitstream Cyberbit is not specified before Arial Unicode MS, as far as I can see. — Chameleon 28 June 2005 20:10 (UTC)

I've just recently found a font on Windows XP called Microsoft Sans Serif. It seems a better font than Arial Unicode MS and probably some other fonts, what does anyone else think of this font? – AxSkov (T) 1 July 2005 19:59 (UTC)

[edit] TfD

This template survived a discussion at WP:TFD. The discussion can be found here. -Splash 05:11, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] IPA fonts added to the common style sheet

IPA fonts have been added to the style sheet at MediaWiki:Common.css. To apply them to a table, div, or other HTML element, just add class="IPA" to its attributes. More information at Template talk:IPA#Font declaration has been moved to Common.css. —Michael Z. 2005-10-4 20:46 Z


[edit] CSS hackers needed

If any CSS hackers are in the house: Could you please have a look at Talk:Voiced_velar_plosive? It appears that Firefox preferably uses the font MS Reference Sans Serif for IPA letters, but the font is broken. Thanks, AxelBoldt 21:52, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

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