While it's common for Linux users to install the MS Webcore fonts, I would suspect that the percentage who do not, who forget to, or who visit LQ before doing so (possibly to find out how to do so) is greater than the percentage using browsers that don't support embedding.

The decade of overuse of MS's fonts for web design has actually forced distributions to be designed around that, and IMHO LQ shouldn't be part of the problem, especially since the technology to provide a better and more universal solution now exists.

Focusing on thread content first (since it's the most read) at CQ (which is a good place to test and will directly impact LQ in the future). I have updated the CSS to:

where DejaVuSans is a @font-face.

Thoughts on this? How does it look for current members?

--jeremy

Doesn't DejaVuSans need to be to the left of sans-serif?

Once everything with DejaVuSans is verified and tested, it's likely we could remove sans-serif (or move DejaVuSans up in priority considerably). Initially I merely intended it as an absolute fallback.

--jeremy

Then it will never be seen. All browsers will get to "sans serif", stop there, and then serve up whatever font that is.

Simply throwing out an idea. From what I understand, this board uses proprietary software. Since such software is more likely targeted for everyone, not just the open source world, hence the question regarding open source founts. Nothing more than a question relating to the issue. It was not an argument, statement, accusation or anything else.

My font list(s) are too long for a post.

If anyone is interested, they can be obtained here:

http://pineviewfarm.net/misc/Font_List.txt

Those are from Mageia 4 and Mint 17--both installs have not had additional fonts installed. The Debian box has had additional fonts installed and the Slackware computer is asleep for the night.

i don't understand what the discussin is about.
if LQ was some sort of Design Website, ok. but the way it is, everything that is to say has been said in post #2: serif, sans-serif, monospace. and don't use absolute sizes.

fwiw, the website looks just fine.

it's readable - because i adjusted my browser so it displays fonts at the size i like them at.

As I understand it the discussion has two parts. One is that since virtually nobody using Linux will have the specified fonts installed we fall back to a default font which dugan and perhaps others feel ugly. Since this is a site frequented by Linux users that is anomalous and means that the majority of users don't see the intended font.
The other side of the coin is that it seems odd that a site dedicated to Linux would "promote" the use of fonts not installed in any distro by default.
Having said that I am of the opinion that the font doesn't particularly matter and the site looks fine but I do think the relatively incompatible font names ought to be removed if for no other reason than they're obviously pretty redundant.

273, i understand all that and imho the whole discussion is moot:

the font names "sans-serif", "serif" and "monospace" do not point to a particular font, but to whatever your system has defined them to be.
this is the same whether you're using linux or windows or mac os or...

just an example, on my system "sans-serif" is mapped to "Droid Sans", "serif" is mapped to "Droid Serif" and "monospace" is mapped to "Droid Sans Mono", but this is different on every system.

that's why (good) web designers don't use absolute font names, but one of those generic "meta" font names.
you can also tell the system to use a specific font provided from the internet (@fontface), but on a site like this, that's vanity, plus it makes for longer page loading times.

let the local system decide which font to use, not the website.

I'm not sure you do understand then. Up until dugan pointed this out the site wasn't using names like ' "sans-serif", "serif" and "monospace" ' at all. That, in essence, is the discussion.
The continuation, which is whether other fonts could be specified, you may think moot.

FWIW, sans-serif was always on the CSS font list, both in the old design (LQ) and the new design (CQ and AQ).

--jeremy

Ah, sorry, yes I see how my using "at all" wasn't perhaps making things clear.