Commons:Requests for comment/Hosting of free fonts in Commons

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Recently I've suggested an ability to upload fonts in Wikimedia and specifically Wikimedia Commons in the Wikimedia's bug tracker, phab:T367644.

In nutshell the idea is to make Commons also a free repository of fonts, just like Open Font Library https://openfontlibrary.org but using capabilities of a Wiki to organize files, provide metadata, patrolling and so.

The uploaded fonts may also be used for:

  • As webfonts for parts of pages that need specific styles, phab:T166138, or to display a historic text of hieroglyphs and cuneiforms.
  • To create an image of a text using a font by some wiki syntax so in order to create this page for example we won't need to upload each letter of different free fonts separately, like this category and its subcategories.

This is similar to the idea of addition of 3D models to Commons, STL files that had support as a community wishlist in 2015 and happened on the following years, but this time for fonts.

The reason I'm bringing this to RfC in Commons is however this comment phab:T166138#7223790 that is uncertain whether Commons community is willing to support yet another format of files. I think we as a community should keep ourselves relevant in the web by allowing new ways of contributions and I hope you feel the same way also. Thanks −Ebrahimtalk 12:32, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Ebrahim: Interesting idea. What would be the potential downsides aside from it just being another file format? --Adamant1 (talk) 13:07, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Adamant1: Thanks for the interest! Community wise, what Xover has described in phab:T166138#7223790 here, new policies, patrolling, increase of Commons scope and so and technical wise there are challenges to resolve but they are much smaller than let's say STL support of Wikimedia Commons and this RfC is about the former one. −Ebrahimtalk 13:36, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I found this RfC description very technical but the use cases at the start of phab:T367644 are worth reading. Commander Keane (talk) 13:29, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Commander Keane: I'm very sorry about that, somehow I had to make sure concerns of technical aspects of such support are answered when I'm asking a wider audience to make sure the discussion about community support of this wouldn't be derailed because of them, I perhaps should've used a different approach. −Ebrahimtalk 13:36, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Commander Keane: I think I've now simplified this now. −Ebrahimtalk 06:22, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As Commons is a free media repository, I am convinced that any free (legal and potientially useful) media should be able to find its place here. Basically, font files are only containers of glyphs that are usually vectorized, but they can hold many glyphs, which make it more efficient to store. There are many typographical styles that need to be visualized (Fraktur, Grotesque, Antiqua, Ornamental, LCD, bitmap, etc.), and we can generate a table as preview of font files. I hope we can get back to adding new file formats, because there are several that are not covered yet, such as LIDAR files (point clouds), textured or animated, rigged meshes, etc. --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 07:29, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
User:PantheraLeo1359531: Thanks for the insightful comment and the support 🙏 I like just to add as the rise of variable fonts, fonts can now have more than simple outlines and can't be simply mapped to a finite number of vector files, moving sliders on https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans/tester shows what I mean. −Ebrahimtalk 08:00, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Noto font family is a good example, and fonts are a very important aspect to typographers. I am sure there are many free fonts in the world wide web that are worth to be archived and preserved :) --PantheraLeo1359531 😺 (talk) 08:07, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Honestly, this sounds like a great idea. But something I wonder is if this could make it easier to display alternative fonts on Wikipedia? For example, a title is in fraktur, would it then be possible to use the Commonswiki-hosted "Franktur font" file and create a title like "{{Font|Fraktur|EXAMPLE TITLE}}" where the "EXAMPLE TITLE" is displayed in fraktur? I work a lot with ancient Chinese seal script which also has countless of different fonts and it would be quite handy if we could illustrate this on Wikipedia without needing a specific image, and that's only if such an image is available. I'm sure that someone like user "BabelStone" can convince a couple of people to donate ancient fonts. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 17:48, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
User:Donald Trung: Thanks for the support 😊 I even have a proof of concept MediaWiki extension I showcased in phab:T367644#9910748 that has a syntax similar to yours which is like [[File:NotoSansOldPersian-Regular.ttf|text=𐎡𐎢𐎣𐎤𐎥𐎦𐎧𐎨𐎩]] and that MediaWiki extension actually works in a fairly regular Linux setup but sure is far from anything that can be deployed in short term in WMF. −Ebrahimtalk 20:35, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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