- From: Adam Twardoch <list.adam@twardoch.com>
- Date: Thu, 07 May 2009 19:27:15 +0200
- To: Brad Kemper <brad.kemper@gmail.com>
- CC: David Hyatt <hyatt@apple.com>, w3-style@boblet.net, www-style@w3.org
Brad Kemper wrote: > Is there any way to just grab kerning, tracking, and width info first, > so that the page can be drawn with the right geometries prior to getting > all the glyph path information? If that would be faster, maybe it could > be an additional standard for loading that separately if available (as > in, from a separate file). Then it wouldn't look as FOUC-like, because > it wouldn't force a reflow. It's an interesting idea, but in reality, it's very unlikely to happen. Especially with non-Latin languages, one needs rather complex metrics information: different glyphs are used for the same characters depending on their positions or neighboring glyphs, and the position adjustments are typically more than just "kerning" (i.e. you usually have adjustments in both x and y). Overall, a substantial portion of the font would have to be offloaded into a separate file. But if browser makers were to support EOT, the EOT spec developers could make sure that there is a recommended order for OpenType table ordering within EOT, so that the metric and shaping tables would be "served" earlier, while the glyph information would be served later. An obvious advantage of EOT over desktop font formats such as TTF/OTF is that EOT is web-specific, so it could be tuned towards specific use on the web. Adam -- Adam Twardoch | Language Typography Unicode Fonts OpenType | twardoch.com | silesian.com | fontlab.net The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer. (Henry Kissinger)
Received on Thursday, 7 May 2009 17:28:01 UTC