Update web font

[liamtoney]

Description of the desired feature

The PyGMT website has a new font which is designed to maximize the difference between lowercase L and uppercase I, etc. Example here: https://www.pygmt.org/dev/api/generated/pygmt.Figure.grdimage.html#pygmt.Figure.grdimage

PR for PyGMT here: GenericMappingTools/pygmt#938

It seems like GMT's site could benefit from the same update. Maybe also would be nice for a coherent "design language" for what it's worth.

Pinging @meghanrjones who was involved in the PyGMT font convo.

Are you willing to help implement and maintain this feature?

No

[maxrjones]

We used the Vercel app to preview the changes for PyGMT. Does anyone know if continuous documentation would similarly work for GMT? I can adjust the css settings for a different font, but it will not be convenient for everyone to build locally to evaluate the changes.

[seisman]

Does anyone know if continuous documentation would similarly work for GMT?

Vercel should work for GMT, but I guess it's more complicated because we need to download and build the GMT codes first. I could give it a try or you want to try it?

[maxrjones]

Does anyone know if continuous documentation would similarly work for GMT?

Vercel should work for GMT, but I guess it's more complicated because we need to download and build the GMT codes first. I could give it a try or you want to try it?

I have never used Vercel before, so it would likely go better for you to try if you do not mind.

[seisman]

I have never used Vercel before, so it would likely go better for you to try if you do not mind.

OK.

[weiji14]

Looking back, it probably wasn't a good idea to use GMT as the team name on Vercel (i.e. https://vercel.com/gmt) for PyGMT 😅. The current (old) free plan we're on has a limit of 3 owners (me, @seisman and @leouieda). I can probably kick Leo out and add you in @meghanrjones so you can actively work on things behind the scenes. Or we can upgrade and pay $20/month per team member according to https://vercel.com/pricing (or send them an email since we might be able to get an open source plan) 🙂

[seisman]

it probably wasn't a good idea to use GMT as the team name on Vercel (i.e. vercel.com/gmt) for PyGMT

Can we change the team name to "GenericMappingTools"?

[weiji14]

it probably wasn't a good idea to use GMT as the team name on Vercel (i.e. vercel.com/gmt) for PyGMT

Can we change the team name to "GenericMappingTools"?

You mean without spaces? Sure. But for the Team URL, I would recommend keeping it as GMT, so that the vercel URL will be shorter. For those without any idea what we're talking about, this is a screenshot from the Vercel settings page:

[maxrjones]

@PaulWessel, do you think it's worth inquiring about the open source pricing for Vercel?

[PaulWessel]

@PaulWessel, do you think it's worth inquiring about the open source pricing for Vercel?

Sure, that cannot hurt. At $20/mo we would be at $240/year which is still something the budget could absorb though.

[maxrjones]

@PaulWessel, do you think it's worth inquiring about the open source pricing for Vercel?

Sure, that cannot hurt. At $20/mo we would be at $240/year which is still something the budget could absorb though.

OK, I will reach out to Vercel. I think a discount will be necessary - my interpretation of the standard pricing is $20/mo/team member which could get exorbitant quickly.

[PaulWessel]

Right, forgot the math on the times number of team members. That would get uglier.

[seisman]

@meghanrjones Although we're using Vercel in pygmt and website, and it works well in these two repositories, I still don't like it. The main reasons are:

1. As you can see in the pygmt repository, we need to add two files package.json and vercel.json to the repository.
2. For GMT, we need to write instructions in the pacakge.json file to build GMT and the documentation. It's not easy to do, because the package.json file is in JSON format (developer unfriendly)
3. I tried to switch the vercal-action in PR Use Vercel action for continuous documentation pygmt#964, so that we can build the documentation in the CI and then deploy to vercel. However, it doesn't work for PRs from forks, so making it useless to an open-source project.

[maxrjones]

@meghanrjones Although we're using Vercel in pygmt and website, and it works well in these two repositories, I still don't like it. The main reasons are:

1. As you can see in the pygmt repository, we need to add two files `package.json` and `vercel.json` to the repository.

2. For GMT, we need to write instructions in the `pacakge.json` file to build GMT and the documentation. It's not easy to do, because the `package.json` file is in JSON format (developer unfriendly)

3. I tried to switch the vercal-action in PR [GenericMappingTools/pygmt#964](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/964), so that we can build the documentation in the CI and then deploy to vercel. However, it doesn't work for PRs from forks, so making it useless to an open-source project.

OK, I do not know of a better solution than Vercel. So, it seems like the best path forward is to keep Vercel for now but to not upgrade the account in hopes that a better option is developed in the future.

[weiji14]

@meghanrjones Although we're using Vercel in pygmt and website, and it works well in these two repositories, I still don't like it. The main reasons are:

1. As you can see in the pygmt repository, we need to add two files `package.json` and `vercel.json` to the repository.

2. For GMT, we need to write instructions in the `pacakge.json` file to build GMT and the documentation. It's not easy to do, because the `package.json` file is in JSON format (developer unfriendly)

3. I tried to switch the vercal-action in PR [GenericMappingTools/pygmt#964](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/964), so that we can build the documentation in the CI and then deploy to vercel. However, it doesn't work for PRs from forks, so making it useless to an open-source project.

OK, I do not know of a better solution than Vercel. So, it seems like the best path forward is to keep Vercel for now but to not upgrade the account in hopes that a better option is developed in the future.

Netlify is probably the closest competitor to Vercel. Another one is readthedocs, they have a documentation previewer for each Pull Request (see https://docs.readthedocs.io/en/stable/pull-requests.html) (xarray uses it). Either way there will be time spent on development to use any of these platforms.