User talk:Stephen G. Brown/Template:Arabic font size

Template:Arabic font size
That's quite big. Actually, disturbingly big. What was wrong with the 125%? &mdash; Vildricianus 13:44, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


 * You must not have the "Traditional Arabic" font, so that it is probably selecting Arial Unicode MS or Tahoma for you instead. Arial Unicode and Tahoma have some problems with Arabic, and "Traditional Arabic" is much better, but 150% is actually still very small with "Traditional Arabic". Since "Traditional Arabic" is one of the basic fonts that came with my computer, I had hoped it was now in common use. I’ll remove the "Traditional Arabic" selection and return it to 125%, but I dread seeing what Arial Unicode does to Arabic. —Stephen 13:58, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Hmm, yes. On this new pc, a lot of fonts are lacking, which is very annoying (only question marks for East Asian scripts). Still need to fix that, actually. Cheers. &mdash; Vildricianus 15:05, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I'd like to remind you guys that all of my language templates include support for CSS and that MediaWiki and hence Wiktionary includes support for every user to customize their CSS. So if the generic values don't work well on your computer try editing your CSS file by adding a line such as this:




 * That will make it twice as big as the default size and will use the font you have but we don't called "Expensive Arabic font".


 * You will find your custom CSS page at User:Vildricianus/monobook.css
 * Enjoy, let me know if you can't figure it out, or even better take it to the Beer parlour so others can find out about it and some kind soul can put it in an FAQ somewhere. &mdash; Hippietrail 15:51, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, I’m mainly concerned with how everyone else views the pages. I’ve never been happy with the Arial Unicode MS or Tahoma Arabic, but the most important thing is to select fonts that most Americans, Brits and Aussies have on their computers. I thought it might be time to move to a better font, but it looks as though "Traditional Arabic" is not be as widely held as I’d hoped. —Stephen 16:03, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The way the templates are supposed to work, you should be able to put "Traditional Arabic" first in the list and it will be used by those who have it, if they don't have it, it will fall back to further in the list until it gets to Arial Unicode MS or Tahoma. If you find that this is not the case it is a bug and the template needs to be fixed. Please report any such bug on the Beer parlour and maybe the template's talk page. &mdash; Hippietrail 16:51, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


 * That’s the way it worked, but Arabic is unusual in that different fonts need to be sized to different percentages. MS Unicode and Tahoma need to be 125%, while Traditional Arabic needs to be 175%. If I set the size to 175% for Traditional Arabic and a user doesn’t have that font, his Tahoma will be gigantic and very bold. —Stephen 16:58, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Ah yes, I forgot about that and can't think of any way to fix it, but I'm not a CSS guru. It would be really nice if we had the instructions on how to edit your CSS and some recommended font/size pairs at the top of the talk page for each script template, and mention these in whatever the relevant parts of the FAQ or other such pages... &mdash; Hippietrail 17:54, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) Really? Didn't know that. Unfortunately, I can't read Arabic, so I wasn't speaking for myself, yet for the casual user who will perhaps not have the font and be annoyed that Arabic is far bigger than the other languages. I think, though, that this trick deserves mention in Tips and tricks. &mdash; Vildricianus 16:09, 25 April 2006 (UTC)