Re: Allow @font-face and TTF font embedding in tests? (Japanese fonts)

Hello Gérard,

Tuesday, February 12, 2013, 12:01:50 AM, you wrote:

> Hello all,

> This spun from
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-css-testsuite/2013Feb/0008.html

> We never discussed this issue before.

> Should we allow and promote TTF font embedding in CSS3 tests ?

We   should  allow  font  embedding in tests, certainly. Firstly, some
test  may  be  testing  exactly  @font-face.  Secondly, some tests are
easier  to  write  if  it  is  known  that  a  font  is available with
particular properties. Thirdly, it can produce more consistent results
by  providing  a  font  to  be  used  and  thus  not  relying  on  the
availability  or  not  of  so-called  'web  safe  fonts'  (which, like
so-called web-safe colors, are anything but safe).

> Benefits:
> - no prerequisite to read
> - no download, no installation to do


> Drawbacks:
> - download and processing can be much longer: eg ipam.ttf is 8MB

But subsetting and compression can help there.

> - not all user agents support TTF font embedding

If they don't support a particular font format (or font downloading at
all) then:

-  for  tests where the downloadable font is helpful but not required,
they  are  no  worse  off  and  go  to the next font in the list, or a
fallback
-  for  tests  which  do  depend  on  downloadable  fonts,  then  they
(correctly) fail the test

> Any comment is welcomed.

I  would  prefer  to see woff rather than raw truetype or opentype fonts. The font
data  is the same when decompressed, but it is smaller to transmit and
can contain useful metadata. WOFF is widely supported.

> ---------

> I also believe that any/all fonts necessary to tests should be
> fetchable, downloadable from

> http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Test/Fonts/

> Gérard



-- 
Best regards,
 Chris                            mailto:chris@w3.org

Received on Tuesday, 12 February 2013 16:31:38 UTC