Re: WOFF and extended metadata

Sylvain Galineau> I don't think I understand the problem any better now
than I did two weeks ago.
Sylvain Galineau>that it's an optional feature and I can't justify spending
any further time on this topic at this point.

Well, I don’t blame you one iota. I’ve talked, read and written myself to
many an early nap on this meta data topic.

The fact is, many of us including Sylvain, work in companies that have
rather complex and difficult-to-see meta data on fonts. It may not be in the
form I’m proposing, i.e. (in a web font format), one entry for every
possible property of text and fonts in CSS.

The answers to: “What is each font published by Microsoft recommended for?
and what are the parameters of that use? Can it blink? will it work on a
curved baseline? Should I shadow it? Should I reduce the em to 16 units?”....
reside in the heads of some combination of Mike Duggan and Simon Daniels.
Before that, it was in the heads of Robert Norton and Amit Copti (sp?), and
the founder of the font meta data tribe at Mircosoft typography was Chris
Larson. In most companies, it is either knowledge of individuals or in
databases that the type developement, type marketing and type sales force
has at its finger tips.

Nobody at Microsoft does any font selection without some sort of meta data
consultation.

The question here, is whether this web font format is going to be founded
with a complete set of property recommendations useful in the
pre-composition decision-making process, or is a “web font selection
nighmare” going to proceed based on private databases, human-held knowledge,
trial and error and flying graphics-of-fonts between font-mismatch-finding
authors and users?

Maybe we should all be sorry this was proposed as ‘optional” so people could
take these critical educational needs non-seriously?

Cheers!