Unable to access fonts.googleapis.com in China.

[hifall]

Not sure if this is a concern of yours, but I am reporting it anyways.

I notice that mkdocs-generated docs refer to fonts.googleapis.com for font files. As you know, Google sites are blocked in China, including fonts.googleapis.com. Therefore, when a user in China tries to access a mkdocs-generated document, it will take him like 10-20 seconds for the browser to time out accessing fonts.googleapis.com, then the rest of the content shows up. This gives an impression that the docs are slow in China.

Thanks.

[d0ugal]

It is possible to solve this with a custom theme.

Is there a way we can make it fail faster?

[waylan]

So I did some searching and it seems that China has blocked, then unblocked, then blocked, then unblocked ... various googleapis.com sites. The common solution is to simply not use googleapis.com. At least three resources (here, here, and here) suggest a mirror of fonts.googleapis.com (fonts.useso.com) which is actually hosted in China, the second suggesting to use a script to only use the mirror if the user is actually in China.

As far as I can tell, we have three options:

1. Add the files to the theme for self-hosting
2. Use the Chinese hosted mirror as a fallback
3. Do nothing and leave those in China behind

[waylan]

Just found this which suggests a way to use a local copy of a font if the user has it installed locally. Not sure if that is a sensible alternative for this sort of problem or not.

[patatetom]

hi,
the same problem appears on a mkdoc provided a lan without internet access... :-(
regards, lascaP.

[waylan]

It occurs to me that we could provide a Plugin (support for which will be available in the next release) which provided the font files. If the plugin is activated, then a build would include the font files locally. That way we make it a user decision. This would work for those who are doing development on a local system without internet access.

My one hesitation is that the default behavior doesn't solve the China problem. Why would the default not work everywhere? Unfortunately, including the font files by default and having a Plugin exclude them as an option is a little more difficult to do.

Unless we can make this work with theme inheritance though the new theme customization support coming in the next release... Hmmm......

[tomchristie]

I guess ideally our built-in themes ought to just self-serve any resources they use.

[coliff]

I guess ideally our built-in themes ought to just self-serve any resources they use.

An alternative approach is what Medium, Bootstrap and others do and use a native font stack so no external or bundled fonts are needed.

REF: https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.1/content/reboot/#native-font-stack