RE: EOT Lite - possible outcomes

Mikko Rantalainen asked:
>I want to make sure we're on the same map here. Do you think that
>Monotype and other commercial font vendors would be happy with EOT
>Lite given the following status:
>(1) EOT Lite font files do not include rootstrings
>(2) EOT Lite font files do not include compression
>(3) EOT Lite font files do not require same-origin restrictions

>Note that (1) and (2) are required so that Firefox, Safari and Opera
>can implement EOT Lite. The (3) is required for MSIE compatibility,
>so we have no choices here.

I'm not sure that (3) would be a requirement for IE, actually.  I haven't checked the data, but actually I think you could enable same-origin checking and have good-enough compatibility - or IE could check and see if it was an old EOT file (e.g. HAD a rootstring) and allow it to work cross-domain.  Or that could be part of the spec, I don't care.  I would expect (though I don't know) that the vendors would want SO protection, but that's up to them to weigh in on.

>You do realize that this does not prevent linking and using EOT Lite font files without a proper license and there's no protection of any kind except that one cannot simply copy EOT Lite font file into his operating system's font folder? One can copy an EOT Lite font file from a remote server to his own server and it would work just fine.

"Prevention" is a strong word, and I'll be clear that I've moved down on this over the last couple of years - Vlad's "garden fence" analogy is a good one here.

>If this is all okay, I'm for it. In practice, the results are:
>
>(A) true interoperability between browsers (including MSIE)
>(B) prevent interoperability with the OS (for now)

Yes.  And note that "for now" would really be "for anyone following the license that's in the font file", which is likely enough for the vendors to be happy (yes?).

-Chris

Received on Thursday, 2 July 2009 17:52:38 UTC