Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Questions and discussion about B-Greek policies or the B-Greek forum.

Can you see the text correctly?

Yes
24
96%
No
1
4%
 
Total votes: 25

Louis L Sorenson
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Re: Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Post by Louis L Sorenson »

I really don't like this font setup on my computer. I'll install Abynnissa and see if it changes. It's like reading some weird comic book font. I'll check back in after I install the recommended font.
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Jason Hare wrote:Users would just have to surround their Greek text with a small code.
I don't think any solution that requires users to tag or do something is going to be viable.

Stephen
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Nigel Chapman
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Re: Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Post by Nigel Chapman »

Stephen Carlson is right on the money...
I don't think any solution that requires users to tag or do something is going to be viable.
However, it's a Javascript one-liner to locate all Greek/Coptic strings and wrap them in markup tags. This example will turn them red:

Code: Select all

document.body.innerHTML = document.body.innerHTML.replace(/([\u0370-\u037D\u0386-\u0386\u0388-\u03FF\u1F00-\u1FFF]+)/g, '<span style="color:red;">$1</span>');
You'll probably want to tag them with <span class="greek">$1</span> and define .greek { font-family: "Etc"; } in your CSS...

I've tested this code on a large page like http://www.letsreadgreek.com/epictetus/ ... ekText.htm using Firebug and it caught all the words without damaging other links. It takes several seconds for that amount of text, however. On this phpBB page, the effect is instantaneous.

Nigel.
"When eras die their legacies are left to strange police." -- Clarence Day
Nigel Chapman | http://chapman.id.au
Jason Hare
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Re: Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Post by Jason Hare »

Nigel Chapman wrote:Stephen Carlson is right on the money...
I don't think any solution that requires users to tag or do something is going to be viable.
However, it's a Javascript one-liner to locate all Greek/Coptic strings and wrap them in markup tags. This example will turn them red:

Code: Select all

document.body.innerHTML = document.body.innerHTML.replace(/([\u0370-\u037D\u0386-\u0386\u0388-\u03FF\u1F00-\u1FFF]+)/g, '<span style="color:red;">$1</span>');
You'll probably want to tag them with <span class="greek">$1</span> and define .greek { font-family: "Etc"; } in your CSS...

I've tested this code on a large page like http://www.letsreadgreek.com/epictetus/ ... ekText.htm using Firebug and it caught all the words without damaging other links. It takes several seconds for that amount of text, however. On this phpBB page, the effect is instantaneous.

Nigel.
8-) Wish I knew Javascript!! :)
Jason A. Hare
The Hebrew Café
Tel Aviv, Israel
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Post by Jonathan Robie »

For what it's worth, everything looked a lot better on my Linux system (Fedora 14) before I changed the stylesheets .... I think the trick is to find a set of fonts that looks good and is available almost everywhere, or else to force people to install fonts if we can't find a set that already exists.

The JavaScript approach could work, but the more we customize phpBB, the more we have to do every time there's an upgrade.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Eeli Kaikkonen
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Re: Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Post by Eeli Kaikkonen »

Jonathan Robie wrote:The JavaScript approach could work, but the more we customize phpBB, the more we have to do every time there's an upgrade.
Apart from that, the optimal solution would be to offer personal settings for fonts. I don't like the idea of a forum forcing something else, when I have already chosen a font in my browser settings. The default works fine in Google Reader, but the custom font in the forum (what I'm seeing right now, whatever it is) doesn't look good.

(Edit: my first words sounded wrong - I'm not a native English writer.)
Nigel Chapman
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Re: Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Post by Nigel Chapman »

Jason Hare wrote:
I wish I knew JavaScript!
It was more of a note to the site admins here. :) It's the simplest way to apply polytonic faces to just the Greek text; the phpBB convention seems to be to put it in a function x and then onload_functions.push('x()') somewhere in the body.

Jonathon Robie wrote:
For what it's worth, everything looked a lot better on my Linux system (Fedora 14) before I changed the stylesheets
Same here, I'm seeing Gentium on my Ubuntu system, which is not a great screen font at this size; also it's only there because I've specially installed it. Requiring the user to install fonts is exactly what Unicode should get around. To my mind there are two general options we have...

Option 1: SELECTING GOOD SANS-SERIFS

If we can agree that serifs for the whole board aren't very readable on screen, then the big decision is whether to go with sans-serif, or to use sans-serifs for the board in general and serifs for just the Greek text.

For sans-serifs, Arial Unicode MS exists on Windows where Office is installed, and on Mac 10.5 and higher. Lucida Grande is standard on Mac; Tahoma is standard on Windows. Liberation Sans has identical metrics to Arial and is standard on Linux. This should cover screen readability. And it does no harm to increase the font size from the very small text the board is presently using.

The most popular Greek fonts are serifs, though, so I think JS markup is necessary. It's a one-line change if you drop it at line 62 of the current page (end of the special windows.onload function) so not difficult to maintain between upgrades. Then we just make a list of people's favourite specialist fonts and use them for that text only.

Option 2: REMOTE EMBEDDING

GFS Didot is embeddable using the Google Font Directory, so we could simply supply an excellent font in the Times New Roman style if we wanted to.

http://www.google.com/webfonts/family?f ... bset=greek

Likewise, Ubuntu (the font) is remotely embeddable and brilliantly readable even at small type sizes. Just paste some complex Greek into the previewer to see what I mean:

http://www.google.com/webfonts/preview? ... ily=Ubuntu

TESTING

Endnote: browsershots.org is the best free system for testing cross-browser display issues. If it displays correctly on the last few Mac/Windows/Linux systems, then we'd have a winner.
"When eras die their legacies are left to strange police." -- Clarence Day
Nigel Chapman | http://chapman.id.au
Nigel Chapman
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Re: Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Post by Nigel Chapman »

As Eeli noted, style switching would be ideal (using a cookie to remember preferences), but that's considerably more customization.

Would creating a custom style allow us to bypass the upgrade concerns?

http://www.phpbb.com/about/features/ (see: Styles)
"When eras die their legacies are left to strange police." -- Clarence Day
Nigel Chapman | http://chapman.id.au
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Nigel - thanks, this gives me several useful directions to explore, and some great tools to use for testing, so I'm not flying blind with this. I've been hampered by the fact that I don't have a Mac or Windows box to test with, and everything looked great to start with for me. I probably won't have a chance to look at this again today, though (guests coming tonight, and a heavy work day).
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Ken M. Penner
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Re: Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Post by Ken M. Penner »

Jonathan Robie wrote: I *think* this would be a better order: "Gentium", "Palatino Linotype", "Lucida Grande", "Arial Unicode MS", "Abyssinica SIL". Anyone else have an opinion on this question?
I did a little more research, and my recommendation is now to include Tahoma in the list, probably as the first item. It is a sans-serif font that has included the polytonic range ever since the 2004 version 3.14 was bundled with Windows XP SP2, and Apple has included it in OSX since 10.5 (Leopard). It also includes Hebrew, for when we bring in the LXX. And it looks fine (IMHO). In case someone doesn't have Tahoma (Linux? Pre-Leopard OSX? Mobile? Pre-XPSP2 Windows), then after Tahoma we would include other fonts we know support polytonic in those systems. I have recanted of recommending Gentium, and would not include Abyssinica in any case.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahoma_%28typeface%29
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fon ... ?FMID=1131
Ken M. Penner
Professor and Chair of Religious Studies, St. Francis Xavier University
Co-Editor, Digital Biblical Studies
General Editor, Lexham English Septuagint
Co-Editor, Online Critical Pseudepigrapha pseudepigrapha.org
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