New tests for web fonts

I've been developing a set a of tests for downloaded opentype font and .eot font support in browsers for languages that use 'complex scripts', since that is a hugely valuable use case for web fonts across a large proportion of the world.  Lots of people are producing free embeddable and editable open type fonts so that people in their region can read Unicode based web pages. (A large proportion of the over 800 fonts on my system fall into this category.)

I'd be happy for people to poke around at these tests, and check that there are no errors, before I announce them officially.  You can find them at:

http://www.w3.org/International/tests/test-webfonts-1

http://www.w3.org/International/tests/test-webfonts-2




Preliminary results from a quick initial test show the following:  (all tests on Windows XP using Uniscribe v1.626.5756.0)

Truetype/Opentype downloads
========================

IE7: No support

IE8: No support (and an unexpected problem displaying the Thai, Tibetan, Myanmar page at all)

Firefox 3: No support

Opera 9.51: No support

Safari 3.1.2: Armenian, perfect; all others yield blank space (although the reference text is rendered correctly for Hindi, Arabic and Urdu in the default browser font).



.eot downloads
============

IE7: Armenian supported fine; Khmer, mostly ok but drops or displays as boxes certain characters; Hindi, perfect; Arabic, only shows certain characters, doesn't place multiple diacritics properly; Urdu, only shows aleph; Tibetan/Thai/Myanmar, Tibetan and Myanmar are perfect, but Thai represents some combining characters as square boxes.

IE8: (surprisingly) No support (and a problem displaying the Thai, Tibetan, Myanmar page at all)

Firefox 3: No support

Opera 9.51: No support

Safari 3.1.2: No support (but behavior varies: Armenian, default font; Khmer, blank space; Hindi, Arabic & Urdu, default font; Thai, default font, but Tibetan and Myanmar, blank space)




If you are interested in sending me results of tests you have run yourselves, please send me screen snaps and the following info:
OS, UA version, Uniscribe/Pango/Core Text/etc version.


Cheers,
RI



============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)

http://www.w3.org/International/
http://rishida.net/

Received on Monday, 25 August 2008 10:43:04 UTC