RE: TypeCon Presentation Draft

On Monday, August 09, 2010 9:32 PM Dave Crossland wrote:
> >
> >               - Because of the per table compression, a browser can
> download all or only part of the WOFF.
> >                       - ** This is purely hypothetical. Any better
> examples? **
> 
> I think this is a GREAT example - because the idea is worthy of
> implementation and if font publishers and web developers understand
> the idea and ask browser developers to implement it, they will, but if
> no one understands that this will be possible then the browser
> developers may not implement it.
> 
> So yes, please do include this in the presentation and bill it has a
> instrumental reason why WOFF _can_ be "better" than TTF/SVG/EOT.
> 

Hypothetically, the same could be done with TTF/OTF fonts - you can request to download offset table followed by the table directory followed by individual tables, etc. I am not sure though if there is a practical benefit in doing this - many times downloading a whole binary file in one HTTP request may be faster than issuing multiple HTTP byte range requests. There are many reasons why WOFF *is* better but I am not convinced this is one of them.

> >
> >                               - This would be useful to web
> developers‚ "What font is that?"
> 
> This would also be useful for web users who may also ask, "What font is
> that?"
> 

Absolutely agree.

Regards,
Vlad

Received on Tuesday, 10 August 2010 02:08:53 UTC