From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from lindbergh.monkeyblade.net (lindbergh.monkeyblade.net [23.128.96.19]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.subspace.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 84C221DDD0 for ; Thu, 2 Nov 2023 16:35:53 +0000 (UTC) Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dkim=pass (2048-bit key) header.d=lwn.net header.i=@lwn.net header.b="MgJT4k+z" Received: from ms.lwn.net (ms.lwn.net [45.79.88.28]) by lindbergh.monkeyblade.net (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 715DD134; Thu, 2 Nov 2023 09:35:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (unknown [IPv6:2601:281:8300:73::646]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by ms.lwn.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id E71E54B7; Thu, 2 Nov 2023 16:35:47 +0000 (UTC) DKIM-Filter: OpenDKIM Filter v2.11.0 ms.lwn.net E71E54B7 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=lwn.net; s=20201203; t=1698942948; bh=7waQtWBq6v9SleipOhTZie0WA8WJXzE+cSqQL2QSnDE=; h=From:To:Cc:Subject:In-Reply-To:References:Date:From; b=MgJT4k+z6aIjsE3/eyAALjy8FigCW5E8U8EzL0R5xNFfeOblm2ZUZVm9FD126S+NL /nSoiY0k+X0fN7FBtq9u6T8YEFrhJ9EoDXtilcZ+5mHDVfR0LHKvfOK6gg/qzYb/eJ 9qx/pLo4aZOLSBs0WcW3ewZBOwxx7W4MrB6UTiDR/7Fd8OOfeQ93d1u/kQX5KoYM9F xpe6cEQQyUpc4XCK3bCMVoCmVEI2RhUqKCfZ6DTk++s+bzm7T684NCA+aMj692Audn xIbW2xSQ36IQs2/wGV0RF2bdCH6gcViuDYHXXq7wiOXIdTvvVKYTUke01qqzYwdmNG jfc8hULbGSzUg== From: Jonathan Corbet To: Bagas Sanjaya , Linux Kernel Mailing List , Linux Documentation Cc: Thomas Gleixner , Greg Kroah-Hartman , Akira Yokosawa , Stanislav Fomichev , David Vernet , Miguel Ojeda , James Seo , Daniel Vetter , Federico Vaga , Carlos Bilbao , Bagas Sanjaya Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC RESEND 0/4] Documentation: Web fonts for kernel documentation In-Reply-To: <20231102123225.32768-1-bagasdotme@gmail.com> References: <20231102123225.32768-1-bagasdotme@gmail.com> Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2023 10:35:47 -0600 Message-ID: <874ji48658.fsf@meer.lwn.net> Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: linux-doc@vger.kernel.org List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Bagas Sanjaya writes: > The problem > =========== > > Currently, the kernel docs uses system-default serif fonts, as in > Documentation/conf.py: > > ``` > ... > if html_theme == 'alabaster': > html_theme_options = { > 'description': get_cline_version(), > 'page_width': '65em', > 'sidebar_width': '15em', > 'fixed_sidebar': 'true', > 'font_size': 'inherit', > 'font_family': 'serif', > } > ... > ``` > > The problem is depending on the serif font selected by system, the docs > text (especially long passages) can be hard and uncomfortable to read. > For developers reading the docs on multiple devices, the apparence may > look inconsistent. > > The solution > ============ > > Uniform the font choices by leveraging web fonts. Most of people reading > the kernel docs should already have modern browser that supports this > feature (e.g. Chrome/Chromium and Firefox). The fonts are downloaded > automatically when loading the page, but only if the reader don't > already have ones installed locally. Subsequent docs page loading will > use the browser cache to retrieve the fonts. If for some reasons the > fonts fail to load, the browser will fall back to fallback fonts > commonly seen on other sites. So my immediate response to this is pretty uniformly negative. - If you don't like serif, tweaking conf.py is easy enough without pushing it on everybody else. - I'm not thrilled about adding a bunch of binary font data to the kernel, and suspect a lot of people would not feel that the bloat is worth it. - The licensing of the fonts is not fully free. There's so much we can do to improve our documentation and access to it; messing around with web fonts seems - to me, at least - pretty low on the list. I suppose I can ask people at the kernel summit session in a couple weeks to see if others feel differently. Thanks, jon