Re: I expect all foundries to start offering web font licenses within 6 months.

On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 9:56 AM, Dave Crossland<dave@lab6.com> wrote:
> 2009/7/15 Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com>:
>> On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 9:19 AM, Dave Crossland<dave@lab6.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Ascender have just announced they will be licensing EOTs by the end of
>>> the month.
>>
>> The important question now is, will the non-IE browsers implement
>> this?  Moz, Opera, Webkit folks?
>> As well, will IE implement TTF linking now?  IE folks?
>
> I think the chance of either camp doing either is slim to none.

I certainly hope they do, though.  Having foundries support these
formats is great, but it's still mostly a lost cause if we can't
interop on at least one.

Moz has certainly talked about considering *plain* EOT, but having the
patent situation turn them off.  With that thrown out (EOT Lite
doesn't use compression), they might be amenable.

No clue about the Opera or Webkit folks, though.

IE's unwillingness seems to mostly stem from foundries' fright over
TTFs on the web.  There's a slim chance that this could tip them over.
 I won't hold my breath, but I'd add everyone to my Xmas-gift list if
they did so.

>> Finally, will everybody use same-origin restrictions on fonts?  We
>> need to standardize on this, and I think SO is a good idea.
>
> Referrer checking creates the same effect, so it doesn't matter if
> they standardise it or not, because foundries will require referrer
> checking until the current Safari userbase moved on to Safari 5 -
> which will take years, the BBC still support Safari 3 for example.

Still matters for when Safari 5 *does* come out.  We don't want to
drag on bad interop longer than necessary.

~TJ

Received on Wednesday, 15 July 2009 15:05:28 UTC