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Re: Current Downloadable Font Status....

Catching up on mail after several weeks travelling ...

On Aug 22, 11:59am, Martin J. D=FCrst wrote:

> On Fri, 22 Aug 1997, Chris Lilley wrote:

> > And then, "I will map my Pi characters to the Unicode Private Use Are=
a".
>
> This is one possibility, but it's confusing.

Less confusing than mapping your Pi characters to ASCII. At least it is
apparent that these are not standard characters, they depend on a private=

agreement (ie the context of this single page).

> I guess we should go
> one step further. What about adding some attributes to OBJECT, so
> that we can say:
>
> <OBJECT PI-FONT=3D"Bundesbahn" GLYPH-IDENTIFIER=3D"47">Alt Gif goes her=
e</OBJECT>

Fine, but no need for extra new attributes. Object is a general scheme, i=
t
provides enough flexibility as it is.

Re-casting your example as

<OBJECT DATA=3D"Bundesbahn" TYPE=3D"application/font-tdpfr"
 WIDTH=3D"50" HEIGHT=3D"60">
  <PARAM NAME=3D"GLYPH-IDENTIFIER" VALUE=3D"47">
     <P>Alt Gif goes here
</OBJECT>

requires no new attributes and does the same thing. Having to specify
width and height, in pixels, is a pain in this instance. Using private
use area characters and relying on CSS to apply the right font takes care=
 of
this and ensures that inline dingbats scale with the rest of the text.

Alternatively

<OBJECT DATA=3D"Bundesbahn#47" TYPE=3D"application/font-tdpfr"
 WIDTH=3D"50" HEIGHT=3D"60">
     <P>Alt Gif goes here
</OBJECT>

Compare with this example fr the Computer Graphics Metafile (more
details at [1]):

<OBJECT DATA=3D"foo.cgm#5" TYPE=3D"image/cgm;Version=3D1;ProfileId=3DNone=
"
 WIDTH=3D"50" HEIGHT=3D"60">
     <P>Alt Gif goes here
</OBJECT>


> For a font with only one glyph, GLYPH-IDENTIFIER could be left out.

Yes, using the client-side specialiser # the default could clearly be
"display the first glyph"


> Probably we would also need a size attribute, but I guess the right
> way to provide it, as well as other presentation attributes, would
> be via style.

The issue of inheriting style properties into an OBJECT is interesting
and is currently being investigated at RAL.

> Chris, should I submit this proposal to the HTML WG?

I don't think you need any HTML extensions to do this, just an
implementation. Browsers which have already implemented WebFonts should
find support for this fairly simple to add.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-cgm

-- =

Chris Lilley, W3C                          [ http://www.w3.org/ ]
Graphics and Fonts Guy            The World Wide Web Consortium
http://www.w3.org/people/chris/              INRIA,  Projet W3C
chris@w3.org                       2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
+33 (0)4 93 65 79 87       06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France
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