Page MenuHomePhabricator

"Aleo" does not include cyrillic characters
Closed, ResolvedPublic

Assigned To
Authored By
vills
Nov 15 2016, 8:27 AM
Referenced Files
F1938728: Screen Shot 2016-11-21 at 18.37.55.png
Nov 21 2016, 5:40 PM
F1938726: Screen Shot 2016-11-21 at 18.37.29.png
Nov 21 2016, 5:40 PM
F1922592: Screen Shot 2016-11-15 at 6.32.49 AM.png
Nov 15 2016, 2:46 PM
F1922590: Screen Shot 2016-11-15 at 6.32.39 AM.png
Nov 15 2016, 2:46 PM
F1922600: Screen Shot 2016-11-15 at 6.36.39 AM.png
Nov 15 2016, 2:46 PM
F1922597: Screen Shot 2016-11-15 at 6.36.32 AM.png
Nov 15 2016, 2:46 PM
F1922306: IMG_0441.PNG
Nov 15 2016, 8:27 AM
F1922304: IMG_0440.PNG
Nov 15 2016, 8:27 AM

Description

Current font set provide different views for letters in english and russian language.

Task titles in maniphest looks awful when combining both languages.

IMG_0440.PNG (196×1 px, 36 KB)

However description of tasks look more solid.

IMG_0441.PNG (347×1 px, 39 KB)

Event Timeline

epriestley renamed this task from Ability to use custom font in UI to "Aleo" does not include cyrillic characters.Nov 15 2016, 2:25 PM
epriestley added a subscriber: epriestley.

We distribute "Aleo", but this font does not include cyrillic characters or some other extended latin characters (like "ğ" and "Ğ", from Turkish). It does include some extended latin, like the Polish "ł".

Lato does include these characters, so header text which mixes latin languages renders in a mixture of Aleo and Lato.

For most languages, this doesn't seem to be a particularly big deal. For example, here's Turkish with the fallback set to "Impact" to exaggerate differences:

Screen Shot 2016-11-15 at 6.32.39 AM.png (188×1 px, 35 KB)

However, the actual fallback (to Lato) isn't visually distinguishable to me, particularly in this case since both Aleo and Lato have similar (identical?) shapes for the "g" glyph:

Screen Shot 2016-11-15 at 6.32.49 AM.png (176×1 px, 35 KB)

When the mixed language is a cyrillic language, we get this instead: cyrillic in Lato, basic latin in Aleo.

Screen Shot 2016-11-15 at 6.36.32 AM.png (164×862 px, 28 KB)

Here's the entire text in Lato instead:

Screen Shot 2016-11-15 at 6.36.39 AM.png (174×892 px, 27 KB)

Some things we could do:

  • Nothing, since this only creates a minor subjective problem in an edge case (mixing Cyrillic and standard Latin glyphs in an object title).
    • This problem may be more serious for a language which uses a mixture of basic latin and extended latin glyphs, but I couldn't immediately find one: Polish seems to have the glyphs, Turkish doesn't seem to have distinguishable glyphs, and Russian doesn't (normally) use basic latin glyphs.
  • Stop distributing Aleo. Use Lato, not Aleo, for headers.
  • Find some other header font with more glyphs. Use that, not Aleo, for headers.
  • On the server, detect that an object title has only basic latin glyphs, and emit a CSS class like "use-aleo" if it does to render it in Aleo. If the class is not present, use Lato. This will mean that adding a cyrillic character to an English title will remove serifs, but this is probably less jarring than having both styles adjacent in the same header.
  • Find or create a copy of Aleo with these missing glyphs (perhaps by sponsoring the work from @AlessioLaiso).

@vills, see T4213 for discussion of custom themes, skinning, etc.

@vills, see T4213 for discussion of custom themes, skinning, etc.

Thanks!
I saw T4213 before, but this feature request is more about just fixing/changing font, not whole theme.

How could we edit T4213 to make it more clear that it applies to all discussion of themes, skinning, and custom CSS, including fonts?

Write it on the top of task description. Now it looks like task, that inherit other tasks with UI problems/features. Should i close this one?

Yeah these characters don't exist in Aleo. We'll probably move to a different header font, but not sure when/what that may be.

eadler added a project: Restricted Project.Nov 17 2016, 8:53 PM
eadler edited projects, added FreeBSD; removed Restricted Project.Nov 17 2016, 8:53 PM

The Croatian letter "č" is also missing, but it's the only Croatian diacritic that's not present in the distributed version of Aleo, resulting in this:

Screen Shot 2016-11-21 at 18.37.55.png (94×518 px, 12 KB)

The difference isn't huge, though, and it's barely noticeable on a high-density display.

Screen Shot 2016-11-21 at 18.37.29.png (94×547 px, 12 KB)