Font statistics?

[matthew-dean]

This looks like a great resource. However, previous incarnations of font stacks gave statistics as to how common each font might be on each platform. In other words, what the likeliest font would be on each platform, %-wise, and how it would appear. Any chance you could add something like that?

[danklammer]

@matthew-dean This is a great idea — though I am having a hard time finding reliable data for only western languages (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian, Georgian).

Looking at StatCounter's world stats isn't entirely accurate knowing it includes all language types including Brahmic/Aramaic scripts (which I didn't account for in these font stacks).

World:

United States:

United Kingdom:

Germany:

Australia:

[SethFalco]

This might be silly, but thoughts on adding a button on the website, where a user can click to submit their operating system, system language, and installed fonts?

The goal is to create an original dataset, so there are more metrics to base the font stacks on. The method proposed will not net many data points compared to tracking it though website visits or a serverless function, but I think it could be nice to take an approach where:

• The website itself it kept lightweight and simple in functionality.
• The user must opt in and take explicit action to share data, nothing happening behind the scenes.
• No need for a privacy policy, because any actual storage of metrics is performed manually in a PR on GitHub.

I think a user flow like the following could work:

1. User visits the website as normal.
2. On the line with "Try Font Stacks" and "GitHub" buttons, include a "Contribute Data…" button.
3. When pressed, a modal opens which explains how it'd help, and displays the Operating System and Browser (or User-Agent), System Language (or Accept-Language), and installed fonts.
4. Under that, there would be the same data shown in monospace as CSV, along with a button to copy it to the clipboard, and another button to take the user to GitHub, where the user is encouraged to open a PR and append the line to the .csv file maintained in this repository or a separate one, released under the Open Database License.

Alternatively, the button could open a modal that POSTs to a serverless function, but then this introduces said serverless function and the need of a privacy policy, which might not be worthwhile. At least for me, I like that the site makes minimal external connections (only Cloudflare).

Happy to help design and prototype/demo an implementation if this doesn't sound too bad, but no pressure. 👍🏽