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

On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 12:51 PM, Dave Singer <singer@apple.com> wrote:

>
> I'm going to try to summarize what I think I am hearing.  I don't
> necessarily agree or disagree with what this, you understand, I am trying to
> get clarity in at least my own mind.
>
> On the 'serving' side, we are looking for an indication in the font that
> shows whether it's freely usable or not.  The 'allows embedding' bit has
> been suggested, and that free fonts would have this set and commercial fonts
> could have this clear, if they wish.  This isn't obviously the right
> semantics, so that's question one; is this the right indicator?
>
> If the font indicates it's freely usable, then the serving side MAY serve
> it as-is (but see below for recommendations).
>
> If it indicates it's not freely available, the serving side MUST
> 'obfuscate' the font in the chosen way, and it can/should also use the
> access control methods from the W3C.
>
> If a user-agent is requested to use an embedded font that is not labelled
> as freely usable, and that font is not 'obfuscated', the UA MUST refuse to
> use the font.  The UA must also implement the access control restrictions,
> and respect them if they are used (for anything, not just fonts).  The UA
> MUST take care that the font is not generally accessible to other
> applications while it's being used for the web site it's embedded for.  The
> UA should exercise reasonable care that it's not easy to find in its
> non-obfuscated state.
>
> The general font engines SHOULD NOT support the obfuscated state directly;
>  the web UA should de-obfuscate before passing it to the font engine.
>
> For any font downloaded off the web, we recommend subsetting, and
> compression.  Whether we need proprietary compression or something like gzip
> is good enough would be the subject of technical discussion.  We would
> recommend against using fonts that disallow subsetting (though for the life
> of me I cannot see why a font vendor would disallow it, or even why the
> capability to indicate that is there).
> --
> David Singer
> Multimedia Standards, Apple Inc.
>
>
This all seems correct, and unobjectionable to me.

~TJ