Re: @font-face and slow downloading

On Tuesday 12 October 2010 00:14:57 Beth Dakin wrote:
> Over in WebKit, we have been thinking a lot about the time delay we
> have with @font-face when the font resource takes a long time to
> download [1].
[...]
> The spec addresses what to do in this case somewhat vaguely [4]. 
> Specifically, in Step 4 of the font matching algorithm, the spec
> says: " Otherwise if the matched font is defined via @font-face and
> needs to be downloaded, the user agent can either wait until the font
> is downloaded or render once with substituted font metrics and render
> again once the font is downloaded."

In the 1998 version of @font-face, there was an optional 'width' 
descriptor to list the widths of relevant glyphs, so that the text 
could be laid out with a synthesized font (approximately, because it 
lacked ligatures and kerning) when the downloaded font took a while to 
download. That is probably where that mention of metrics comes from.


> [1] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25207
> [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=499292
> [3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2010Jul/0251.html
> [4] http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-webfonts/#font-matching-algorithm



-- 
  Bert Bos                                ( W 3 C ) http://www.w3.org/
  http://www.w3.org/people/bos                               W3C/ERCIM
  bert@w3.org                             2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
  +33 (0)4 92 38 76 92            06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Wednesday, 13 October 2010 17:51:15 UTC