Re: [css3-webfonts] Downloaded fonts should not...

On 10/04/2008, fantasai <fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net> wrote:
>
>  L. David Baron wrote:
> > I'm not quite sure what you mean by "in a technical way".  But I can
> > give some reasons it might be a bad idea for a downloaded font to be
> > used accidentally by another Web page or application:
> >
> >  * the font might be in a highly unusual style that you wouldn't
> > want picked up by other content because it makes it hard to read
> >
> >  * the font might use an encoding hack where it encodes glyphs that
> > represent other characters at the codeponts for commonly-used
> > characters.  (This was a common use for downloadable font
> > implementations in Netscape 4, particularly by Web pages in South
> > Asian languages.  It has also been used for fonts containing various
> > types of symbols or pictures.)  If such a font were picked up by
> > other applications, or even other Web pages, it would make them
> > illegible.
> >
> >  * the font might be a malicious font designed to make the text in
> > a particular other Web page say something other than what it
> > actually says.
> >
>
>  Add to that
>
>   * the font might be subsetted for that particular page/website, leaving
>   lots of missing glyphs when used for other content

I think points 1 and 4 are valid uses.

But I think points 2 and 3 are abuses and should be actively discouraged.
(Wouldn't these cause serious accessibility problems? I thought CSS is
there to fix these problems, but are we re-introducing them?)
-- 
cheers,
-ambrose

The 'net used to be run by smart people; now many sites are run by
idiots. So SAD... (Sites that does spam filtering on mails sent to the
abuse contact need to be cut off the net...)

Received on Thursday, 10 April 2008 12:42:39 UTC