Talk:SVG fonts

Latest comment: 2 months ago by 100Polar in topic How to install fonts

Pretty please? edit

This is a great page . . . but . . . would it be possible for some dedicated soul to set (to use old-fashioned hot metal terminology) each of the typefaces on the page in that typeface? :s The point size would just have to be so that the style was clear, at least in general. There is the svg image but it's of quite low quality and only shows a few of the 120 typefaces listed. I think it would be fantastic to have a visually accurate list of GNU typefaces that could be used anywhere. I need an alternative to Arial Bold and only realised that this copyright thing was what was causing the problem I was having with my graphics. It's hard to figure out which of the 120 typefaces is closest. LookingGlass 16:18, 29 May 2008 (UTC)Reply

Arabic? edit

Do any of these fonts cover Arabic? AnonMoos 16:31, 10 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

"DejaVu Sans" and "DejaVu Sans Mono" cover almost all Arabic script languages (I think Pashto isn't well supported though). --Khaled Hosny 12:04, 18 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Thanks; Arabic script support has improved, but there still seem to be some issues (see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Slogan-ar-wiki.svg etc.) AnonMoos 12:28, 10 May 2008 (UTC)Reply
I think the font you used has smaller glyph widths than the dejavu font, thus the later got out of the boundaries. --Khaled Hosny 16:51, 10 May 2008 (UTC)Reply

Substitution edit

Is there any mechanism by which a substitution table can be used? For example, "Helvetica" to "Nimbus Sans L", "Palatino" or "Book Antiqua" to "URW Palladio L" Random832 14:59, 29 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

If the SVG renderer uses fontconfig, then something similar is indeed possible. But this needs to be done across all redering servers. --Kjoonlee 12:30, 12 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

Liberation edit

Can the Liberation font family be added? This is a set of free (GPL + exception) fonts published by Red Hat that are metrically equivalent to common non-free fonts (e.g. Arial, etc.). Superm401 | Talk 03:40, 30 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Actually, Nimbus Sans L and Nimbus Roman No9 L are already more than metrically equivalent; they're virtually identical. IMHO font substitution would be wiser. 90.234.98.121 12:28, 12 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Oops that was me. --Kjoonlee 12:29, 12 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

Is there a common/always working Font? edit

Testing locally on a Windows system with Inkscape I seem to be in serious trouble: I can't find any font working with Inkscape/Commons/Opera. The fonts Inkscape offers to me (a long list) seems to have no counterpart in Commons (another long list). The suggestion here (just use 'sans') would satisfy me ... but Inkscape on Windows doesn't give me that option. What am I missing? Thanks for any hint - Deerwood 07:14, 7 June 2008 (UTC)Reply

Bitstream Vera Sans seems to work, I overlooked that one (and Opera didn't show it initially, but does after a reload), I still have to test it on Commons. Sorry for any hassles - Deerwood 05:20, 9 June 2008 (UTC)Reply

More CJK fonts? edit

Is it possible to get more CJK fonts installed? The current CJK fonts are quite limiting. We only have 2 or 3 different fonts per language. The Japanese fonts (Kochi fonts) are not professionally made, the strokes are not spaced evenly. The Chinese fonts (AR PL fonts) seems to be designed for 90's low res computers, they turn bitmap-like at medium sizes that's not actual small. I tend to use the Korean fonts when possible because they are quite professionally made and more legible, but it is not always usable in Chinese/Japanese because missing characters not used in Korean, character variations, and punctuation differences. --Voidvector 21:19, 28 August 2008 (UTC)Reply

New fonts edit

 

As noted in Bug 8898, today two additional font packages (as I understand it) have been added. I have included them in a new version of the showcase file on the right, but would like it if someone else would take a look before including it on the page - preferably someone with knowledge of the indic languages, since the script samples were done by copy+paste from the Wiki-pages. I surely hope I got them right. --Hk kng 18:38, 14 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

Um, was this supposed to screw up font rendering in any way? Compare the images below: (1) uploaded before installation of new packages, (2) uploaded a few minutes ago. What's going on here? Fvasconcellos 15:42, 15 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

 

Could you give links to the uploaded files? What I have seen on my home (Ubuntu) system is that font substitution will differ: text attributed as "Arial" for example was previously rendered with Nimbus Sans L, whereas after the installation of Liberation Sans this was used instead. but without a look at your source code, this is only a speculation. --Hk kng 18:32, 15 October 2008 (UTC)Reply
They're Image:Moxifloxacin skeletal.svg and Image:Ciprofloxacin.svg. The font is indeed specified as Arial in both—should I start using font-family:Nimbus Sans L from now on, or maybe specify a font stack? I don't suppose font substitution can be changed so Nimbus Sans "trumps" Liberation Sans? Liberation may be metrically equivalent to Arial and Helvetica, but as a Helvetica clone (or an improved version of Helvetica, actually), Nimbus is much more appropriate as a free/libre substitute for either. Fvasconcellos 00:53, 16 October 2008 (UTC)Reply
Should I file a patch request? I don't mean to sound self-serving in any way, but I've uploaded nearly two thousand SVG images to Commons, nearly all of which depend on appropriate font substitution and accurate rendering. Can I expect anything to be done about this? :) Fvasconcellos 20:07, 17 October 2008 (UTC)Reply
Definitely, I'd say. If you look at Tim starling's reaction to Bug 15994, it does not seem he is too concerned about fontconfig issues. Well, considering how many problems there are with the servers at this point, it is at least understandable. --Hk kng 19:14, 18 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

AR PL UMing (Chinese font set) cannot be rendered edit

File:Sameboat temp002.svg
AR PL UMing
 
AR PL UKai

I have tested several available (traditional) Chinese fonts and discovered that the SVG file applied the AR PL UMing isn't rendered in Wiki at all. (Update latency or file corruption isn't possible because I have changed to other fonts and re-uploaded it and it rendered well under the same image name.) I don't opt the other fonts because neither Serif (Mingti/UMing) nor calligraphic (UKai) fonts is suitable for small station name notation in a route map. But some of the important Chinese characters is absent in the old Sans (KaitiM) font. Making the remaining choice to be AR PL UMing set. Please help check if the AR PL UMing set installed correctly or something else causes the error. This is a long term problem with SVG Chinese font in Wiki. Thx -- (User:Sameboat in commons, en, zh) 222.166.160.221 01:11, 2 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

GENTIUM edit

Could the Gentium font be considered for the next upgrade? It's a free (ais) font that supports many alphabets, very elegant and aesthetic, and it's available in pretty much any linux distro. es:Drini 16:49, 11 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Verdana? edit

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(diagrams)#Fonts contributors should think of using Verdana in SVG diagrams. But this font isn't listed here, and there's no explanation of why such a common web font is not available. Any hints? --HYanWong 17:11, 11 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Verdana isn't a free font. It's Microsoft owned. Therefore it's English Wikipedia manual of style which should be fixed. es:Drini 00:57, 25 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
The list at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(diagrams)#Fonts is a list of web-safe_fonts. The list here is a list of free fonts. Kaldari 16:04, 28 July 2009 (UTC)Reply
If you are looking for a good approximation for veranda that is free, Lexend (https://www.lexend.com/ & https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Lexend) looks like it would be a good fit. This is not currently installed for svg rendering. CdnMCG (talk) 17:32, 5 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

Complete font test edit

I added an image testing all of the fonts in MediaWiki's SVG engine. I know the image is huge but this page isn't accessed very often and I think it's more useful than a simple list (because most of these are not professional or well-known typeface names). There are a few errors because I generated the SVG semi-automatically, so feel free to correct anything or let me know.

Also, the non-Latin-alphabet fonts need type samples in their respective scripts, so if anyone can help with that please let me know. —Dease 02:38, 28 March 2009 (UTC)Reply

"Recommended replacements" section needed edit

I'm thinking it would be a good idea to add a section to this page indicating recommended replacements for proprietary fonts. For example:

  • Times New Roman: Recommended replacement is DejaVu Serif, which is typographically very similar and has extensive Unicode support.
  • Arial: Recommended replacement is DejaVu Sans, which is typographically very similar and has extensive Unicode support.
  • Courier New: Recommended replacement is ???
  • etc.

Everyone okay with me adding this? Moxfyre 22:42, 15 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Kochi font has a problem edit

Actually, Kochi font is not a free software font now. I think it should be uninstalled from the site. Instead of this, I think Ume font (梅フォント) is good for installing.--Widehawk 22:44, 2 May 2009 (UTC)Reply

Indic Bengali Font edit

Is it possiblr to add the SolaimanLipi.ttf (welknown good looking Bengali font) for Bengali.Jayantanth 10:36, 6 June 2009 (UTC)Reply

When will SVG font rendering become broadly usable? edit

I uploaded an extremely basic and simple SVG file at Commons:File:Simple inverse relationship chart.svg which included a little bit of basic text in the "Times New Roman" font at a fairly large size, and the rendered result result in the full size view (660 × 584 pixels) was a little crude and not really properly anti-aliased (but legible), while the text in the thumbnail (180px wide) view was barely legible at all. I substituted the "DejaVu Serif" font as suggested above, and the full-size view was better (though still not great), but the thumbnail view was complete gibberish (a few random horizontal lines). To get the text to display legibly in thumbnail view in this ultra-simplistic bare-bones minimalistic SVG file, I had to convert text to vector paths (which resulting in increasing the size of the file about 50-fold).

When is the SVG text rendering of standard basic fonts going to be broadly usable over a range of resolutions (display sizes)? I have about a half-a-dozen PNG graphics which are actually derived from a vector source, but which I haven't uploaded as SVG because of the nightmare of dealing with text (since those graphics have long texts in multiple fonts, not just a few brief monosyllabic words all in the same font). AnonMoos 02:20, 9 June 2009 (UTC)Reply

I'm wondering the same thing. Is there at least a sandbox of sorts somewhere so that we can test the rendering of various fonts/sizes/scalings without making a mess somewhere else? 0x30114 17:22, 25 August 2009 (UTC)Reply
You can preview at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:SVG_Check ... -- AnonMoos 07:39, 3 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

I was unaware of the font problem until I uploaded a map I'd worked on in Inkscape. As luck would have it, I used Bitstream Vera sans because I happen to like it for on-screen maps. This is supposed to be free and supported. For good measure, I downloaded the latest version just to be sure. Result: useless. Text has moved out of position all over the place. Some sizes and styles have changed. No use for a map, where the position and size of things are of the essence. I'm happy to export it into PNG and upload that, but it's then far less revisable by anyone else working on the same topic, as well as being a good deal larger file size.Sjwells53 18:16, 3 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

There are a lot of fonts that don't scale like the path would... I think some of the bugs have already been fixed and it got better, but it is still very vexing. I would opt for reducing the amounts of fonts offered by removing fonts that trigger scaling bugs right now. Something like 10 sans-serif and 10 serif fonts (plus perhaps 30 "special" fonts?? Not sure if those are very useful for an encyclopedia anyway) should be more than enough. Having more fonts is nice in general, but not if one has 500 fonts out of which 20 are scaled properly.
The only trick with this is to identify the fonts that create the least problems - not all problems seem to be caused by the same bug. I thought for a while that the Khmer OS font was causing few renderer-scaling problems, but then I ran into a bunch...
If you look at the thumb presented for File:MediaWiki_SVG_fonts.svg (i.e. [1]) and its large equivalent (e.g. something like [2], one can already identify fonts that are problematic with scaling.
While I feel a little sad as everyones choice will become smaller, I think it would overall give a better experience for all SVG uploaders (whein I think about it now, it might also give wikipedia images/articles a bit more of a uniform look) Iridos 11:46, 8 July 2011 (UTC)Reply

Non-supported font with fewest problems edit

I echo the suggestions at Talk:SVG fonts#When will SVG font rendering become broadly usable? and Talk:SVG fonts#"Recommended replacements" section needed.

I cannot find a single supported font in Inkscape 0.46, so I also propose a short list of non-supported fonts that have the least problems when rendered on Wikimedia sites. Maybe a link to a list of fonts that work, whether they are free or not?

I had been using Arial for some simple text images (listed above as having a recommended replacement of DejaVu Sans, but my Inkscape does not have that either). Arial on wikimedia sites get the last one or two characters trimmed off at some sizes. I suppose a font that renders smaller than it should would be preferable to one that overflows its bounding box. -84user 21:39, 18 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

You can download Deja Sans at http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/index.php?title=Download or the links from en:DejaVu_fonts and install it on your system so that Inkscape knows about it. That's not actually the main problem... AnonMoos 17:27, 7 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

Which scripts do these fonts primarily target? edit

I think it would be a good idea to add a column indicating the scripts that the supported fonts primarily target. --seav 07:04, 28 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

Absolutely agree! It's very confusing, and less serviceable, otherwise. yoyo (talk) 02:16, 17 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Non-Scalable fonts edit

Font such as "Times" that are not scalable can cause all kinds of rendering oddities. Could we identify all of the non-vector fonts and add a warning to better not use them? --Chire 10:57, 14 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hm, I just wrote above... how about removing fonts that lead to rendering problems? I don't see the point of offering fonts that are rendered/scaled incorrectly and only lead to bad results. Iridos 11:51, 8 July 2011 (UTC)Reply
Yes I would agree, some fonts are really not usable (Times, Helvetica ...) --Perhelion 10:32, 29 August 2011 (UTC)Reply

Linux Libertine edit

Can we add Linux Libertine, it is the new font for creating the Wikipedia wordmark.--Svgalbertian 16:03, 11 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Sans rendering issues edit

Hi. I'm not picky about font in my images, so I've been using the Inkscape default "Sans" for all of my work. Unfortunately, it seems to render particularly badly on the commons, which has been causing me some problems. Firefox, chrome, and of course Inkscape seem to do a much better job, at least in the sense that the text occupies approximately the same amount of space in all of them. Does anyone know if there is are plans to change the way wikipedia renders Sans? Mcstrother 03:38, 7 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Nevermind, I fixed the problem by just changing all my fonts to Liberation Sans, which approximates Arial, Inkscape's default "Sans" font on windows. Mcstrother 15:14, 3 May 2011 (UTC)Reply
But Sans is not really a common (generic) font-family!? I found another reason for this (Bug), if you specific the font-family in single quote the render has a problem (do particularly badly).[3] (Or the renderer makes something different, my example 'Bitstream Vera Sans' is different to Bitstream Vera Sans) --Perhelion 14:39, 17 May 2011 (UTC)Reply
There is no different in latin letters between Bitstream Vera Sans and DejaVu Sans and Sans. --Perhelion 15:09, 17 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

Nazli font edit

would you please update Nazli font and other farsi web fonts because it is updated in official site . now it has problem with لا specially in pdf export gadget bug reports:

http://web.archiveorange.com/archive/v/N57rDZ1p9j9KQq5Yclr3

and

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30326

Reza1615 13:37, 16 August 2011 (UTC)Reply

Liberation Sans Narrow and other equivalent of common fonts edit

Please add support for Liberation Sans Narrow, a metrically equivalent to Arial Narrow (better then Nimbus Sans L Condensed). Automatic Substitution would be wonderful: e.g. Arial Narrow interpreted as Liberation Sans Narrow.

I would also like if metrically equivalents/substitutions of other common fonts would be supported: Verdana, Trebuchet MS, Georgia, Comic Sans MS, Impact, Arial Black, Tahoma, Palatino. Alternatively a "Recommended replacements" section.

Please consider also suport for Linux Libertine, Linux Biolinum and Gentium, all installed and supported actually with LibreOffice.

ChrisR --79.16.109.106 20:46, 7 November 2011 (UTC)Reply

DejaVu Condensed? edit

Tracked in Phabricator:
Bug 63206 resolved as fixed

It seams "DejaVu Sans Condensed" and "DejaVu Serif Condensed" don't exist anymore, or it is a temporary bug?--Perhelion (talk) 18:44, 17 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

I've got the same problem, it seems it isn't temporary bug. Is there anything I can do about this? Should I remove these fonts from the list? --Jembezmamy (talk) 10:08, 2 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

TeX fonts edit

What are the fonts which are used by TeX \mathit, mathbb, \mathbf, \mathcal etc. ? Are they available with SVG ? Can thay be downloaded freely from somewhere ? -- Nomen4Omen (talk) 18:31, 18 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

Answer to last question is probably; try this Google search... AnonMoos (talk) 14:28, 9 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

New free fonts for Wikimedia's PNG renderer edit

Is there an ability to add ParaType family of fonts – PT Sans, PT Sans Caption (a wider version for the smallest font sizes), PT Sans Narrow, PT Serif and PT Serif Caption? They are all released under SIL Open Font License. Ain92 (talk) 17:03, 11 September 2012 (UTC)Reply

Phabricator's task created.

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T97181 Relli054w (talk) 21:21, 24 April 2015 (UTC)Reply

Liberation Sans edit

Hi,

after the text in all my SVG-pictures was displaced, I downloaded the font "Liberation Sans" and used it to avoid this problem. But still: If I upload an image, the text is completely displaced in Commons (eg this one). So can sby help me: What's the problem? I use Adobe Illustrator on Windows. Thanks and greetings Allrounder (talk) 14:14, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

The problem is caused by the file specifying the font-family as 'LiberationSans-Regular' instead of 'Liberation Sans'.
If Adobe Illustrator won't easily correct the font-family, you could use a text editor (such as Notepad) to search-and-replace each occurrence.
Instead of specifying a single font, you should also add some fallback fonts (Arial is very similar and is available on every Windows and Apple computer even if Liberation Sans is not installed; and sans-serif is a suitable default font if none of the installed fonts match). Each computer will then display the first font in the list which matches the name of one installed on it.
So replace
* font-family="'LiberationSans-Regular'"
with something like:
* font-family="'Liberation Sans','LiberationSans-Regular',Arial,sans-serif"
Note that Arial does not need an apostrophe because it is a single word, and sans-serif does not need an apostrophe because it is a CSS standard fallback name. I've included 'LiberationSans-Regular' as the second item on the list in case Windows computers such as yours do not recognise the more conventional form 'Liberation Sans' (not sure whether Illustrator would understand that it is the same font as the one that it calls 'LiberationSans-Regular').
Richardguk (talk) 15:52, 8 December 2012 (UTC)Reply
Thank you very much! But tbh I don't really know, how to change the font-family in Illustrator. If I click on File > File Information > RAW-Data I can see "<stFnt:fontFamily>LiberationSans Regular</stFnt:fontFamily>", but it is not possible to change it... The only way I know to change fonts is to use the toolbox and click on a font ^^. Also Arial isn't installed on Wiki-Servers, is it? Because in the beginning I used Arial and it didn't work either. Thanks a lot though and greetings Allrounder (talk) 21:05, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
I see from commons:Commons:Forum#Displaced text that McZusatz has now uploaded a revised version of File:Political System of the United States.svg with the above changes made.
I don't know about Illustrator, but one way to edit SVG files is to open them in a text editor. For example, in Windows, if you run Notepad, you can then open the SVG file, search-and-replace or edit the text manually, then save the file as text. (If you cannot find the file, temporarily rename it with ".txt" at the end instead of ".svg", then after you have saved the changes in Notepad rename it back to ".svg" at the end before you upload it.)
Arial is not available on the server because it is not an open-source font, so you need to include an available font such as Liberation Sans in the font-family list for it to display properly in Wikipedia articles. But the sizing is similar so Arial makes a good fallback option for computers rendering the SVG file where Liberation Sans is unavailable.
Richardguk (talk) 23:00, 8 December 2012 (UTC)Reply
Here is really not the place to talk about SVG basics or Illustrator basics. There are enough other places to discuss about this, which are already exactly done. -- Perhelion (talk) 03:18, 9 December 2012 (UTC)Reply

Section 'Another Complete list' has no uppercase 'U' edit

The section 'Another Complete list' shows examples typically containing the full Latin alphabet, both upper- and lower-case, but for some reason has no uppercase 'U'. I expect this is a simple typo, and would have edited the text to replace 'STVW' by 'STUVW' globally in that section. However, it's not text, but an SVG image, which I can't edit at the moment. If anybody else has a suitable SVG editor and a few spare moments, please feel free to amend the displayed text. yoyo (talk) 02:26, 17 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

  Done But Ubuntu is also left. -- Perhelion (talk) 08:36, 4 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Japanese Kochi Gothic isn't different from Kochi Mincho edit

Tracked in Phabricator:
Bug 64002 resolved as fixed

I recently updated file:MediaWiki SVG fonts.svg to show the actual Japanese text (kanji, katakana and hiragana) of these Japanese fonts. Although the Western characters differ as Gothic to be sans-serif and Mincho serif, the actual Japanese text isn't different. I checked the SVG-PNG render in 500px, 860px (native) and 2000px widths, but they still look the same. The funny thing is that the 2 fonts differ correctly when rendered by Jarry1250's SVG Check. If you are using Windows XP or higher you should be able to notice the difference between these 2 types of Japanese font: Mincho (serif) ~日本語あえいおうアエイオウ / Gothic (sans-serif) ~日本語あえいおうアエイオウ. -- Sameboat (talk) 16:19, 16 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

That font isn't currently on our servers (Hopefully that will be fixed soon. See the bug. Note that the font "Takao Mincho" and "Takao Gothic" is available). On Jarry's SVG check, the toolserver is configured to use DejaVu serif and DejaVu sans for Kochi Mincho and Kochi Gothic respectively. However WMF servers appear to currently be configured to use DejaVu Sans for both Kochi fonts. Bawolff (talk) 19:58, 16 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

Real fonts - outdated edit

If you really need to know what is happen on SVG fonts, you need to become a MediaWiki software developer. Because the behavior is not documented. That means not that the font-list is outdated (some new and some removed, the real list is linked) that means also that some fonts are interpreted as some other fonts here. Software developer are always lazy, keep nice and easy working. The normal guys need only to waste his times to find out the mystical what is really happen. -- Perhelion (talk) 10:40, 10 June 2014 (UTC)Reply

As the huge amount of fonts and with image examples now (from volunteers), there is someone needed with script knowhow, to update this, I mean (maybe Regexp knowhow is sufficient too). -- Perhelion (talk) 08:20, 11 June 2014 (UTC)Reply

Additional, volunteers seems not understanding this or like make "updates". For example even dedicated users as Sameboat with something knowhow (this nothing personal only exemplary). I'm telled him personally concrete (months ago) that "this page" is outdated, but he put yesterday an example File: MediaWiki SVG font list Russian Cyrillic.svg with stand 2008 on this page. -- Perhelion (talk) 08:51, 11 June 2014 (UTC)Reply

Arabic fonts/typeface and replacements edit

Greetings, It would be great if Amiri font was also included as an arabic font, its a superior font, fits in relatively small spaces, not to mention its a very beautiful font, but anyway; commons/wikimedia seems to default to be DejaVu or so, this font is not a traditional arabic font, maybe if the default would be a Naskh font, or if there is a way to map fonts to closer font families, current default font takes a lot of space; i.e. its wider than usual, its skews maps and other svgs that have arabic text. maybe for now I should try and use Kacst alternative instead of amiri, never the less, i think current default is not the best choice.--Uwe a (talk) 20:02, 5 February 2015 (UTC)Reply

Open Sans Fonts edit

Is it possible to add Open Sans Fonts to Fonts used by Wiki engine to render SVG files?

Agree. It is strange it's not added, at least not in this page SVG fonts. --YitzhakNat (talk) 06:49, 17 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

big update edit

I have updated the list to what is currently shown in the wiki font list. I am not convinced it is accurate, however, since many fonts still seem to be getting substituted in the images. That list also has editors, but I could not find where they are getting their information from. Adding to the confusion is that some fonts seem to work in the Commons SVG Checker, but they don't work in the actual render. The font list in the checker is out of date too, because it gives warnings about some fonts that do in fact work.

Another issue I found is that where some fonts are missing characters, those particular characters will get substituted with another font. (Not a bad thing in general, just potentially misleading in this situation.) I tried to remove those characters in the Latin and Cyrillic example files, but for the Chinese ones especially, it was hard for me to tell, so I left them in. Maybe someone with more knowledge about these can clean them up. --Lasunncty (talk) 07:03, 18 June 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Lasunncty: Thanks for updating, as you can see in File:MediaWiki_SVG_font_list_sans.svg many fonts get rendered by DejaVu Sans. As you can see in c:Help:SVG#fallback everything unknown get rendered by DejaVu Sans.
That list also has editors, but I could not find where they are getting their information from. I got my information from looking at rendering-results.
Adding to the confusion is that some fonts seem to work in the Commons:Commons:Commons_SVG_Checker, but they don't work in the actual render. true Commons:Commons:Commons_SVG_Checker (yes three times Commons) and https://tools.wmflabs.org/svgcheck/index.php run as far as I know on http://tools.wmflabs.org/. They do not only have different fonts, they also have different renderers: phab:T218828, most obvious if you compare File:Identify_renderer.svg, which renders completly differnet on SVG_Checker
The font list in the checker is out of date too The font-list can be found here: Commons:MediaWiki:CommonsSvgChecker.js. as far as I know it also contain fonts that are not available and does not contain fonts, which are avalbable. If you would know the correct list, we migth could bug someone (Interface_administrators) to change it to your updated list. But since I do not know the fonts, I am not able to update.
Also I think I know much this field, I generally see here many quesiontmarks, without answers.
 — Johannes Kalliauer - Talk | Contributions 21:16, 18 June 2019 (UTC)Reply

Hebreic, Greek edit

There is no Hebrew or Greek font comparison ? @Sarang:  — Johannes Kalliauer - Talk | Contributions 16:50, 22 October 2019 (UTC)Reply

Not yet; and also no 한글, ...; somebody should do it ? sarang사랑 17:00, 22 October 2019 (UTC)Reply
Found   and many others in c:Category:Font comparisons (Vector). sarang사랑 17:36, 22 October 2019 (UTC)Reply

Droid Arabic edit

task T210960 According to this discussion, Droid Arabic fonts are not supported by Wikimedia. https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/fc-list, SVG fonts and File:MediaWiki SVG font list arabic.svg need to be updated.

Droid Arabic Kufi:style=Bold
Droid Arabic Kufi:style=Regular
Droid Arabic Naskh:style=Bold
Droid Arabic Naskh:style=Regular
Droid Naskh Shift Alt:style=Regular
Droid Sans Arabic:style=Regular

Thanks 4nn1l2 (talk) 10:03, 15 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

I think also "KacstOne" does not work in File:MediaWiki_SVG_font_list_arabic.svg.
@Lasunncty: you added those font's to File:MediaWiki_SVG_font_list_arabic.svg#filehistory, was it due to SVG fonts?
I think I read somewhere that https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/fc-list is a live-status of the server, and therefore is automatically always up-to-date (but that should be checked). (@Glrx: do you know anything about that?)
However I somehow do not trust the list to be correct.
 
This list asserts that wmf-servers must have 'Nimbus Sans L' installed, which is not listed here.
@Perhelion: said 2017 in c:Special:Diff/271993685:
@ SVG-fonts: Well that's all really gruesome, we'd need the config list for the fallback fonts, because there is nothing at fb-conf from Arial, User:Menner may know that). Because at the same time I noticed that the removed font 'Nimbus Sans L' (serves as a fallback for 'Helvetica' ) still has to be installed. Because I can't find any other fallback font that exactly looks like this (the "a" and the "1" are striking, Liberation Sans is otherwise very similar). Isn't that worth a tech request !? Because I think it's an absolute absurdity to keep the users here in the dark.
SVG fonts represents https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/fc-list, and File:MediaWiki SVG font list arabic.svg could be easily be updated by anyone. I think we should first file a bug-report on phab: (hope phab is not a black hole of bugs), and find out the cause of this differences.
 — Johannes Kalliauer - Talk | Contributions 10:53, 15 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
@4nn1l2: maybe read phab:T210960 — Johannes Kalliauer - Talk | Contributions 11:11, 15 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
 
Noto Naskh Arabic, Noto Kufi Arabic, and Noto Nastaliq Urdu are supported by Wikimedia servers but not reflected in the associated list. The last one (Noto Sans Arabic) is not currently supported.
@JoKalliauer: Thanks for your response.
Yes, KacstOne is not installed too. I may install it.
https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/fc-list is definitely not up-to-date and one needs to update it manually. Please see here: it has been updated once in 2014 and once in 2018. In order to update it, probably a sysadmin needs to run "fc-list :fontformat=TrueType on a scaler to generate" the list. I'm working on it and if I couldn't do it myself, we can simply ask ArielGlenn or Kaldari to update it again. Also see this comment of mine. Some Noto * Arabic fonts are currently supported by the Wikimedia servers, but have not been reflected in https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/fc-list. This proves that the list does not get updated automatically. 4nn1l2 (talk) 06:20, 16 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
@JoKalliauer:Yes, I included them in the SVG file because they are in fc-list. Those particular fonts were added to the list in 2018, but as I've said before there seems to be a disconnect between fc-list and what's actually on the server. Does anyone know how to check the server directly? --Lasunncty (talk) 00:45, 17 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

Accessibility of the fonts edit

A column should be add about if the font is serif or sans serif to allow a faster way to choose them. Sans serifs fonts are better for people with vision issues and dyslexia. --Lmalena (talk) 13:21, 11 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

2021 update edit

@JoKalliauer: Big thanks for working to get an updated font list. Unless you have any reservations, I will go through the comparison files and update those based on your list. On a related note, is there any value in keeping the outdated ones (the ones you marked with strikethrough) in the table, or could those be removed altogether? --Lasunncty (talk) 03:59, 28 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

@Lasunncty: If a svg uses e.g. Ubuntu-font (a outdated font), it is mostly still correctly rendered by Ubuntu font, however as soon as you purge the rendering there will be a font-substitution. New fonts I would mark them as new, because if they don't exist a wile it is imho more likely that this font will get removed again. Imho there should be some default fonts, that can be safely used, and should never get removed.
I don't know enough about fonts. The Problem is that some fonts only exist in e.g. Hebrew, and do not have neither Latin nor Arabic characters, so there will be a font substitution if you use the wrong characters-set (often, but not always "DejaVu Sans"). I don't know much about other characters, but for Chinese I know there are different character-sets, and a font might only contain characters of a different chinese-version than you are testing. Or a font only contains special characters, like math-symbols, so commons character-sets won't be available. Some fonts only exist in e.g. bold, so not specifying the correct style might lead to something unexpected. Some fonts have several names (e.g. "Ani", "অনি Dvf", "অনিDvf", and at phab:T210960#7015971 it is called "অনি Dvf"), often not all names of them are working (so testing all names, with all possible styles, and all UTF8-characters, might be necessary), ... So it is imho "endless" to test. (Or at least I know that I know too less to know how to test.)
@Glrx: might know more about svg-fonts at Linux.
 — Johannes Kalliauer - Talk | Contributions 09:30, 31 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Right, if a new render hasn't been done recently, then it may still show old fonts and not show new ones.
I've done my best to list in the table which character sets are supported, but as you say, for some sets such as Chinese, there may be different subsets used by different fonts. There is a balance between listing specifically which characters are supported and keeping the table to a reasonable length.
I haven't tested any of the alternate font names to see which ones work or not.
Observation: Looking at your notes for the old fonts that still work and the current ones that don't, I agree with your assessment of David CLM and ori1Uni, but disagree with Nuoso SIL and the three EB Garamond Initials variations. I'm using this ref to compare.
Another observation: There are many new fonts in your c:User:JoKalliauer/fc-list that have not yet been added to the table. I can add them, but I don't want to step on your toes if you are already working on it. And by the way, it seems that now https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/fc-list has been updated.
--Lasunncty (talk) 23:46, 2 September 2021 (UTC)Reply
@Lasunncty: You know more about fonts than I do, so change the fonts where you disagree with me. Regarding "Nuoso SIL" and the three EB Garamond Initials you are correct, that were two mistakes of mine. Thanks
I'm not sure if the page "SVG fonts" should list all fonts or only "safe" fonts. If someone creates a SVG and is searching for a suitable font, they should not choose a "temporial" font, but a font that will exist the next 20 years.
The reason why I did not remove old fonts/add new fonts is because I did not want to change someone else's work, because I might not know enough.
As you like: You can add the fonts, or I can do it, as you prefer. (I don't know how to complete the "Character sets".)
 — Johannes Kalliauer - Talk | Contributions 16:15, 3 September 2021 (UTC)Reply
I'm still learning myself, so don't consider me to be any kind of authority on the subject. We can all contribute according to what we know. As far as which fonts are "safe", I think any of them could be subject to change, and everyone will just have to adapt. So I will just list all of them to be complete.
I can start working on adding the new fonts to the list, and once that's done I'll work on updating the comparison files. It appears around 100 new fonts were added, so it may take some time. For the character sets, I'm using the refs listed in the column header. If a particular font can't be found there, additional sleuthing is necessary. The source and license columns are the two I don't know about.
--Lasunncty (talk) 00:31, 4 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

SIL Latin/IPA fonts edit

Could Andika (sans-serif) and Gentium Book Plus (serif) be added for IPA support? I see a couple other SIL fonts here. Kwamikagami (talk) 11:31, 27 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Rugs being pulled out from under existing files edit

I observe that the Ubuntu font is no longer available. In particular, File:EUC-JP.svg uses it, and you will observe that while renders presumably created at the point of upload still use it, renders in nonstandard sizes use neither it nor even a metrically compatible font, which is presumably what would happen to all of the renders were any adjustments to be made to the file. This became clear when I uploaded File:Windows-20932.svg.

I now understand that there are licensing concerns that I was not aware of; however, it does make me rather less confident to include machine-readable text if it comes at such a cost of fragility. --HarJIT (talk) 21:20, 12 December 2021 (UTC)Reply

(Note, have now fixed it to use a different font.) --HarJIT (talk) 11:23, 13 December 2021 (UTC)Reply

Source of some fonts edit

In the table I found two fonts from debian package fonts-arabeyes but it doesn't note. It is Nagham and dimnah fonts and ,maybe, several other from this package. If I right understand source means source from wikimedia got this font but not place where user can find this font. I am not sure that I understand it correct so that information for person who understand it better. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by DustDFG (talk) 18:40, 28 January 2022 (UTC)Reply

Add fonts that are alternative to Helvetica edit

So far, the only mention I saw is for Nimbus Sans L which was in 2010. 10 years have passed and there is still no support for Helvetica alternative.

I'm using mainly Liberation Sans, but it isn't similar to Helvetica. YitzhakNat (talk) 06:52, 17 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

How to install fonts edit

Hello:

I wonder how to install the 'List of available fonts' in macOS and Inkscape.

I reached this page but honestly... I don't know what to do with that information.

Anyone can give me any piece of advice?

Thank you very much in advance. 100Polar (talk) 13:00, 11 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Return to "SVG fonts" page.