- From: Alan Stearns via GitHub <sysbot+gh@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2025 00:45:19 +0000
- To: public-css-archive@w3.org
astearns has just created a new issue for https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts: == [css-fonts] Making the font matching algorithm more prescriptive for local fonts == The [font matching algorithm](https://drafts.csswg.org/css-fonts-4/#font-matching-algorithm) currently gives user agents a lot of choices about local fonts: > UAs may choose to expose all installed fonts to the web, regardless of how that font was installed; doing so is likely to have good internationalization properties for users whose primary language is not supported by fonts shipping with their operating system. > > UAs may alternatively choose to not initially expose any user-installed fonts to aid privacy on the web; for the set of installed fonts a user has installed is often used as a tracking vector to track users across the web. Users should then be able to add to or remove fonts from that set, according to their needs. > > UAs may choose a hybrid approach, where some user-installed fonts are initially exposed for internationalization, but others aren’t. Again, users should be able to customise this starting set. > > UAs are expected to make informed decisions on which fonts they expose to the web by default, so as to balance between internationalization and privacy. UAs are expected to also provide a convenient means for users to add and subtract fonts to meet their particular needs. In addition to the [other](https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/11571) [ways](https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/11648) we are looking at to balance internationalization and privacy needs around local fonts, I think we should consider whether we could be more prescriptive and interoperable around local font access. The current text allows a user agent to not do anything about privacy, or not do anything about giving access to neccessary local fonts. It also has some specifiction about allowing users to opt-in for particular fonts, but as far as I know there are no implementations of this idea. I’m wondering what it would take to be able to specify something like ``` UAs MUST NOT initially expose any user-installed fonts, to aid privacy on the web. UAs MUST provide a convenient means for users to add and subtract fonts to meet their particular needs. ``` Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/11753 using your GitHub account -- Sent via github-notify-ml as configured in https://github.com/w3c/github-notify-ml-config
Received on Thursday, 20 February 2025 00:45:20 UTC