RE: CSS3 @font-face / EOT Fonts - new compromise proposal

Hi John, 

> 
> > 2) all fonts on the web will "cross the wire" MTX-compressed. I 
> > believe that making all web fonts MTX compressed would satisfy font 
> > vendors request #2, and no additional obfuscation of font 
> data would 
> > be necessary.
> 
> So you're proposing the obfuscated format be MTX-compressed 
> fonts?  Doesn't this leave out Postscript CFF OpenType fonts, 
> fonts with an .otf extension, since MTX only compresses fonts 
> with TrueType-style glyphs, files with .ttf extensions?  Many 
> vendors, including Adobe, primarily ship .otf fonts.  This 
> seems insufficient to cover those fonts.
> 

The table structure of OpenType/CFF fonts is the same as OpenType/TrueType fonts, MTX compressor can do OTF as well. The compressor would leave CFF table "as is" (it's already compressed so there is no need to do a second attempt) but all other tables in a font can be compressed the same way as OT TrueType fonts.

> Are you proposing that @font-face rules can't link against 
> raw TT/OT files?  Or that web authors would choose raw TT/OT 
> or MTX-compressed TT based on the font license?
> 

I believe that using compressed fonts on the web has its own benefits (reduced storage size, low bandwidth consumption, etc.). If any font can be served compressed (and I expect that all authoring and content management tools will be able to do it), and then decompressed by a UA - why not do it? I've never seen bitmap images on the web, GIFs or JPEGs work just fine. Having said this, I am not proposing to forbid linking to raw TrueType fonts, in some circumstances (e.g. when raw font has "installable embedding" allowed) it can be done.

Best regards,
Vlad


> Regards,
> 
> John Daggett
> Mozilla Japan
> 
> 

Received on Monday, 10 November 2008 14:18:28 UTC