Last Call for css3-fonts ("CSS Fonts Module Level 3")

The CSS WG published a new WD for css3-fonts ("CSS Fonts Module 
Level 3") and is inviting a last review, before hopefully progressing 
the specification to CR:

    http://www.w3.org/TR/2013/WD-css-fonts-3-20130711/

From the abstract:

    This CSS3 module describes how font properties are specified and how
    font resources are loaded dynamically. The contents of this
    specification are a consolidation of content previously divided into
    CSS3 Fonts and CSS3 Web Fonts modules. The description of font load
    events was moved into the CSS3 Font Load Events module.

This is actually the second "last call." The first one was in 2002. At 
that point, as the abstract mentions, there were two drafts, css3-fonts 
and css3-webfonts, which have since been merged.

Probably the groups with most to say about this CSS module are:

  - WAI PF WG
  - HTML WG
  - SVG WG
  - Digipub IG
  - I18N Core WG

But everybody else is invited, too, of course. The deadline for comments 
is currently 22 August. Let us know if that is too soon.


More about the changes to the document:

Compared to the previous LCs of 2002, the part about Web Fonts (i.e., 
about embedding fonts in Web documents) has been reduced: synthesis of 
replacement fonts based on font metrics alone is no longer described in 
this module. (It is still part of CSS, but might become deprecated at 
some point.)

The part about font selection has changed more: font effects (such as 
emboss and engrave) have been dropped, anti-aliasing also (it is not 
considered something an author can usefully specify), and emphasis 
styles (such as dot accents for ideographs) have been moved to the css-
text-decor-3 module. Instead, the module has acquired several new 
properties to give access to the features available in many font 
formats, especially in OpenType, such as swash and other alternative 
glyphs, optional ligatures and language-specific glyphs.

The document itself lists the changes[1] since the previous WD (February 
2013):

  - Moved font load events into a separate spec
  - Tightened syntax rules for @font-feature-values rules
  - Added grammar productions for @font-face and @font-feature-values
    rules
  - Revised definition of ‘unicode-range’ descriptor
  - Detailed font matching of composite faces
  - Revised object model interface of CSSFontFeatureValuesRule
  - Detailed effect of ‘font-size-adjust’ on relative unit sizes
  - Reference the potentially CORS-enabled fetch method defined in HTML5


[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2013/WD-css-fonts-3-20130711/#ch-ch-ch-changes



For the CSS WG,
Bert
-- 
  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 Thursday, 11 July 2013 16:52:46 UTC