Re: Downloadable fonts and image replacement

At 04:07 PM 4/25/2006, Joshua RANDALL FTRD/DIH/BOS wrote:

>>Now that descigners are using
>>advanced CSS, I think the time is right try getting webfonts started
>>again. And simple downloads of existing, currently available, zipped
>>truetype files is a pragmatic way to start.
>
>I agree that it would definitely be good to reincorporate webfonts
>into current CSS work, but I'm not sure how a standard supporting
>webfonts would specify required font type support for conformance
>purposes.  While truetype is certainly an industry standard, is it
>standardized by any actual standards body in a public document that
>could be referenced by a W3C recommendation?

Although Truetype is not standardized, Opentype, which is the successor to 
and combines Truetype and Adobe Type 1 font technology is being 
standardized by the ISO MPEG group
   http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/workplan.htm#_Open_Font_Format
(unfortunately, this URL does not give much information about the actual 
work which is at the First Committee Draft stage.)
There is also an ISO Standard for Type 1 fonts (ISO/IEC 9541-1,2 and 3:1991):
   http://www.iso.org/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.CatalogueDetail?CSNUMBER=17277
So Opentype is likely to be a suitable format to standardize on.

>  Perhaps SVG fonts could
>be considered as an alternative, not necessarily instead of truetype,
>but as a format that could be required for baseline conformance in
>addition to other formats that may be supported?
>
>Major points in favor of using the truetype format for webfonts are
>that fonts are widely available, that some form of truetype support
>is already present on most desktop operating systems, and that
>hinting can be used to provide high-quality rendering at arbitrary
>pixel sizes.

Most of the fonts that have been released either as Truetype or Type 1 
fonts are being (or have been) converted to Opentype fonts which are 
platform independent (at least with respect to Windows or Apple systems.)


         Steve
=====================================
Steve Zilles
115 Lansberry Court,
Los Gatos, CA 95032-4710
steve@zilles.org