Thread:Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Design/Typography/Consequences of this "font stack" on Linux systems/reply (2)

Entlinkt, thanks for posting your results. For what it's worth, there are many Linux users at WMF, some have investigated their font usage, and to my knowledge none have this problem.

What version of which operating system are you using? What does fc-match print for each font? I.e. fc-match "Helvetica Neue" ; fc-match "Helvetica" ; etc.

Some possible explanations:
 * your system is using something like Panose numbers to find closest-matching fonts
 * your Firefox is modified to pick TeXGyreHeros-Regular for one of the font names; this might be browser CSS or a plug-in
 * TeXGyreHeros-Regular claims to be Helvetica; can you please run fc-query /path/to/TexGyreHeros.pfb
 * some installer manipulated your O.S. font substitution machinery.

This font stack delivers improved appearance of MediaWiki pages. As your case shows, it is impossible to verify the desired affects are achieved in every case, due to the presence of fontconfig and other O.S.-level font substitutions, browser options, people following random "Improve your fonts!" tutorials on the web, etc. But the font stack does expresses the designers' intent: these fonts, in this ranked order, make the design appear best. A particular system's decision to substitute some other font for a well-known name in the list is often going to be a win, but sometimes not. A lot of Linux distributors spend reasonable efforts to make the many web sites specifying "Helvetica" look good.