- From: Chris Lilley <chris@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2024 16:31:43 +0300
- To: ietf-http-wg@w3.org
- Message-ID: <132cd8d5-d1d0-4912-97c3-9144e814725f@w3.org>
The Web Fonts WG requests review of the Incremental Font Transfer (IFT) specification by the IETF HTTP WG. A new Working Draft of IFT was published on 9 July 2024 [1] This specification defines a way to incrementally transfer fonts from server to client. Incremental transfer allows clients to load only the portions of the font they actually need which speeds up font loads and reduces data transfer needed to load the fonts. A font can be loaded over multiple requests where each request incrementally adds additional data. Earlier work [2] demonstrated the performance improvements in terms of bytes transferred and reduced network delay, for various network types. The current draft (unlike earlier drafts) does not require a dynamic web server to compute patches. Instead, a table of URLs to the pre-computed patches is contained within the subsetted font itself. This means that patches are applicable to multiple users, and are cacheable. Also (unlike earlier drafts, which used a custom patch request protocol) the patches are requested with a regular HTTP GET. We have an Explainer [3]. We would particularly value the review of the IETF HTTP WG on the networking aspects, although review of the entire specification would of course be most welcome. Comments should be raised as individual issues on our GitHub [4]. [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/2024/WD-IFT-20240709/ [2] https://www.w3.org/TR/PFE-evaluation/ [3] https://github.com/w3c/IFT/blob/main/IFT-Explainer.md [4] https://github.com/w3c/IFT -- Chris Lilley @svgeesus Technical Director @ W3C W3C Strategy Team, Core Web Design W3C Architecture & Technology Team, Core Web & Media
Received on Wednesday, 24 July 2024 13:31:46 UTC