Hi! as we have a basic font used for Tifinagh alphabet on all amazigh projects, we are in need of a good designed font. For this purpose, we created a new and an open-source familly font called Wikimazigh especially for amazigh projects and this under the financial help of Wikimedia Morocco user group. So, I have the honor to request the use of this new font on all the amazigh projects as mentioned above.
Community concesnus: Here
Description
Related Objects
- Mentioned Here
- T336637: Tifinagh fonts
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Thanks for reporting this! Under which exact license and license version are these fonts?
That information is currently not embedded inside the font files but ideally should be.
Hi @Aklapper thank you for the prompt response! I replaced the files by others published under SIL Open Font License (OFL), it's an open source license dedicated for fonts and supported by SIL. I'm available for any additional informations!
Thanks a lot! Happy to see progress on this! :)
I'd just like to mention that currently, the "Copyright" says “All rights reserved”, and the "License" says "SIL OPEN FONT LICENSE Version 1.1 - 12 september 2025".
I am not a lawyer. I do not know if the SIL license does not apply to the copyright holder so that "All rights reserved" is fine. Or if having both "All rights reserved" and the SIL as license may contradict each other.
Hi @Aklapper thank you for your prompt response and for revising the files! I deleted the "All rights reserved" from the copyright field to eliminate any types of legal issues. Thank you again and I'm available for any other informations
Thanks! Any further steps are up to the Language and Product Localization team, in my understanding.
Hi,
The custom font embedding feature(also known as webfonts - https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_Selector/WebFonts ) was part of Universal Language Selector project. This was introduced more than a decade ago to support scripts when operating systems did not ship any fonts for them. The situation improved a lot in past several years. Embedding fonts in wikipedia pages has performance and network cost. So we gradually removed fonts as they got widely available. At present, in 2025, this feature is no longer recommended. It is also not actively maintained. There are a few fonts still in Universal Language Selector, but they are not embedded in wiki pages by default. Users can choose them from settings. But even then it is only available for Desktop and not for mobile. The Universal Language Selector is also undergoing a full rewrite this year as part of modernization.
I hope I explained the feasibility of adding Wikimazigh to Universal Language Selector - it is very unlikely. Noto Sans TIfinagh , Tirra, Akatab are some FOSS fonts available, and Noto Sans fonts are widerly available in Desktops and Mobiles. If you see they are not adequate enough, feel free to explain. Thanks.
Rest of this reply is a quick review of your fonts. Unsolicited, but I am also a typeface designer:
- The font is non-standard - It should be unicode compliant to be used anywhere. The glyphs for latin A-Z is changed to Tifinagh as shown below. Tifinagh letters should be assigned to the corresponding Unicode characters. You may refer the above mentioned fonts.
- It is important to version control your fonts and source code - usually done in a github repository with LICENSE, documentation, source code and build scripts.
- The glyphs should be clean vectors. It is difficult to explain what it means in this comment, basically, a line should have 2 points. Corner node should not be used in a curve, Avoid sudden jerks on the curve, Avoid unnecessary points on the curve and so on. You can compare the glyph outline of one of the fonts mentioned above with yours. This is important for aesthetics, font size and associated performance, clean rendering in all resolutions and pixel densities.
