Fonts 2020

[foxdavidj]

Part I Chapter 4: Fonts

Content team

Authors	Reviewers	Analysts	Draft	Queries	Results
@raphlinus	@malchata @RoelN @notwaldorf @mandymichael @svgeesus @rsheeter @jpamental @davelab6	@AbbyTsai	Doc	*.sql	Sheet

Content team lead: @jpamental

Welcome chapter contributors! You'll be using this issue throughout the chapter lifecycle to coordinate on the content planning, analysis, and writing stages.

The content team is made up of the following contributors:

• Authors
• Reviewers
• Analysts

New contributors: If you're interested in joining the content team for this chapter, just leave a comment below and the content team lead will loop you in.

Note: To ensure that you get notifications when tagged, you must be "watching" this repository.

Milestones

0. Form the content team

• Jul 6th: Project owners have selected an author to be the content team lead
• Jul 13th: The content team has at least one author, reviewer, and analyst (minimally viable team formed)

1. Plan content

• Jul 20th: The content team has completed the chapter outline in the draft doc
• Jul 27th: Analysts have triaged the feasibility of all proposed metrics

2. Gather data

• Jul 27th: Analysts have added all necessary custom metrics and drafted a PR to track query progress

• Aug 1 - 31: August crawl

• Sep 7th: Analysts have queried all metrics and saved the output to the results sheet

3. Validate results

• Sep 14th: The content team has reviewed the results sheet

4. Draft content

• Nov 12th: Authors have completed the first draft in the doc
• Nov 26th: The content team has prototyped all data visualizations

5. Publication

• Nov 26th: The content team has reviewed the final draft, converted to markdown, and filed a PR to add it to the 2020 content directory

• Dec 9th: Target launch date

[zachleat]

If @RoelN has bandwidth he would be an excellent author here

[rviscomi]

Thanks @zachleat! Would you also be interested in being a peer reviewer this year?

@RoelN any interest in taking on this chapter or recommendations for other good candidates?

[tunetheweb]

@mandymichael and @jpamental do great things in the variable fonts space and would love to have either (or both) of them contribute if interested.

[malchata]

I'd be happy to work on this in a review or even author capacity, depending on the need. There's a lot of talent already teed up for this space, but let me know if I can help.

[RoelN]

Thanks very much for considering me! 💖 I'd love to, but I'd also be happy to give up (or share) my seat if this means a more diverse mix of authors. :-)

[jpamental]

I'll say the same as @malchata & @RoelN - I'd love to contribute in any way, as long as it doesn't preclude more diverse voices from being heard!

[rviscomi]

@mandymichael @notwaldorf would either of you have any interest in authoring this chapter?

[rviscomi]

@malchata @RoelN @jpamental thanks for your consideration. I'll put you all down as reviewers for now and we can change it to authors as needed.

[notwaldorf]

I haven't authored anything in a while, so I would love to do a co-authoring adventure (or, if someone tells me specifically what to write about, i can try that too). I wouldn't want to take anything about variable fonts away from @mandymichael though :)

[rviscomi]

Great, thanks @notwaldorf! I've added you as an author for this chapter. Can I also put you down as the content team lead? You'd be the point person for keeping the chapter on schedule. You're also free to add people as coauthors as needed.

A few resources to get you started:

• the draft doc is where the content team will plan and draft the chapter
• last year's chapter for reference
• and the project methodology to give you an idea of the possibilities/limitations of the dataset

[notwaldorf]

Ooooh that sounds like a lot of responsibility and self-organization that I'm not really sure I can be successful at (I proposed a co-authoring adventure with structure and unless I copy paste last year's, it feels like a solo-authoring adventure and chaos 😅 )

[rviscomi]

No worries! It's great to have you on board in a coauthor capacity.

📟 @malchata @RoelN @jpamental @mandymichael would any of you like to step into the content lead role and coauthor with Monica?

[LeaVerou]

I'm the content lead for the CSS chapter and we were wondering if we can study variable fonts usage or it would be more suitable here. Seemed like a good idea to ask you folks so we can coordinate.

I would also nominate @svgeesus as a co-author or reviewer, if nominations are not closed!

[paulcalvano]

Hi @LeaVerou. You should be able to study variable fonts. There was a section on it in the 2019 Fonts chapter, so there are some existing queries we can work with. https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2019/fonts#variable-fonts-are-the-future

Example queries:

• https://github.com/HTTPArchive/almanac.httparchive.org/blob/main/sql/2019/06_Fonts/06_18.sql
• https://github.com/HTTPArchive/almanac.httparchive.org/blob/main/sql/2019/06_Fonts/06_21.sql

[RoelN]

This is so exciting :-)

@LeaVerou I think there will be some overlap between CSS and Fonts if you look at the typography side of fonts (as opposed to tech/performance), but I think that'd eventually might feel better at home in the Fonts chapter. Because it'll be a mix of what the browser automatically does, based on the font, and what the CSS authors enable/disable on top of that.

For instance, you could take a look at how many OpenType features are present in fonts (this query implies we can look into that, I hope!), and which ones will be enabled by browser by default, and which ones are actively turned on in CSS.

Not sure this is the place, but here's some initial notes I took, maybe this helps with brainstorming:

- How many optional OpenType features are enabled in CSS?
  - Gives insights in how much enhanced/fancy/non-standard typographic features are used, e.g. tabular figures
  - And how much of it is actually used, and how much is served unused?
  - How many OpenType features are in the fonts anyway?
  - Are "intelligent" fonts being used, that adapt to the screen via mandatory OT features? E.g. `locl`
- How many variable fonts with `opsz` axes are being used?
  - This axes gets used by the browser automatically, making the overall type nicer.
- How many variable fonts are out there
  - And how much of their potential is used? E.g. full width range, or still "regular and bold"?

Edit: I'd be more than happy in a role as reviewer or what-to-write-about-helperouter.

[notwaldorf]

Then, since it's looking like this might be of interest to the CSS folks, i'm 100% ok with bailing and/or just reviewing, and giving my spot to @svgeesus!

[jpamental]

I'd love to be part of the team (content lead if that's needed), ideally co-authoring with you @notwaldorf and maybe @mandymichael ? I think with input from @LeaVerou and @svgeesus it would be a really well-rounded group including perspectives from fonts, design, development, and CSS. It would be wonderful to work with you and Mandy.

[davelab6]

Thank you David, that's great news for me ❤️

[AbbyTsai]

Hello, Jason, Dave, @jpamental @davelab6
Roughly say that the result sheet is almost there as collaborating with Rick, Paul, Barry, thanks content contributors, query reviewers, and welcome any comments.

[svgeesus]

The result that fonts.gstatic.com is the most popular font host in China should be checked, because many Google sites are blocked in China. Although gstatic does not appear on List of websites blocked in mainland China.

The reason is important, because "WebFonts are rarely used in China because the main free font website is unavailable" is a very different story from "WebFonts are rarely used in China because they are huge" or "WebFonts are rarely used in China because the license is too restrictive".

[svgeesus]

Comparing the MIME types and the @font-face format strings, I see that woff2 and woff broadly correspond (75% and 9%) while SVG in format is much higher (6%) than as MIME type (,0.01%). Odd.

[svgeesus]

The font table frequencies are hard to interpret, because the highest possible frequency is 6.97% (for all the mandatory tables). Maybe add another column which is the percentage of fonts containing that table (so head, cmap etc would go to 100%) which allows comparing the frequency of use of the lesser used tables? So for example CFF desktop would be 2,775,483 * 100 / 27,983,775 = 9.92% of all fonts, rather than 0.81% of all tables.

[davelab6]

Gstatic isn't blocked officially/nationally, but since the gfw is administered regionally, and no servers are within prc, it is often unreliable.

[svgeesus]

Thanks for the clarification, @davelab6

[AbbyTsai]

note that the result sheet has add a table showing a percentage of mandatory tables in opentype as nice point of Chris. thanks.

[svgeesus]

@jpamental @davelab6 is the content being developed in another repo? I had a look at the document to start reviewing, but it seems empty except for the early outline.

[davelab6]

Jason and I worked on the doc outline, folding in all comments inline, and then it was Thanksgiving and while we both intended to contribute over the holidays, we did not. I'm on a final week of paternity leave but I'll aim to squeeze in an hour or two every night this week to get a fleshed out but unedited article ready for launch.

[svgeesus]

Not trying to rush you, just trying to contribute. I could also help with authoring, as well as reviewing, if you would like.

[davelab6]

Thank you Chris! Please dive in :)

[davelab6]

Quick update for everyone following here - I sadly failed to deliver in the last few days, but very graciously @raphlinus has stepped up and will be filling up that draft doc in the next day or two, and I aim to review on Sunday/Monday, such that the first draft can go to Rick and team on Tuesday.

[svgeesus]

I reviewed the PR by @raphlinus which is overall very good. I suggested some additions and corrections.