On Wednesday, June 08, 2016 11:32 AM Leonard Rosenthol wrote:
[Ivan Herman wrote:]
I’m going to skip over the questions (all good ones that need answers) and pick on your examples:
Alice reads an art catalogue publication on line, which is typeset with a particular type of font to increase the visual quality of the publication. Alice wants to be able to enjoy the catalogue offline (eg, on a plane), so she instructs her browser to make this possible. However, to do so, her browser (reading system) should ensure that the special font has the right licensing term to be installed on Alice's machine (as opposed to be just displayed when rendered).
Requirement:
- 1. the information on the licensing terms of the publication resources must be available to the reading system
A bunch of things here:
- Let’s not talk about browsers, let’s focus on the generic “reading system” (or RS for short)
- It is NOT the responsibility of the RS to address licensing. It is the responsibility of the authoring tool(s)
- Fonts used for rendering content are NEVER installed into the OS – they are used strictly by the RS (because in most cases they aren’t in a form that is consumable by the OS)
I agree with Leonard that licensing of _any_ publication resources [not just fonts] shouldn’t be a reading system concern.
When it comes to fonts – they don’t have to be installed on “Alice’s machine” to be useful – a font can be temporarily loaded to render a specific content (which is how all webfonts work these days) without ever making it available for other applications/publications to use (which is the only reason to have a font _installed_ on Alice’s machine and it would’ve required a different license). Having an embedded font loaded as a publication resource and stored locally isn’t an issue as far as licensing is concerned, for as long as the use of that font is limited to PWP with which it came.
Thank you,
Vladimir
Received on Wednesday, 8 June 2016 17:49:50 UTC