Re: animation in SVG-in-OT glyphs

I wouldn't drop or discount the notion of animation quite yet.

OpenType in the last few years has seen two major extensions: color and
variability. I think if variable fonts hadn't appeared, implementers would
have devoted more manpower to fuller color support. But in the last two
years, they put a lot of effort to support variation.

The dynamic behind variable fonts effectively gave us a third animation
technique — there had been discussions about the "time axis", and we've
seen animations made using variable fonts, both mono and color (made via
COLR and via layering):

- https://codepen.io/lorp/details/PRdNYq
- https://codepen.io/lorp/details/RMmRgB
- http://tosche.net/AnimatedPixelatedVF/

So we have SVG+SMIL, SVG+CSS, and variable+JS. That's a lot of paths to go.
With so many options on the table, it's no surprise that type designers,
font engineers, font tool makers and browser/OS/app makers haven’t give us
“Everything” quite yet.

But we’re just 5 years since the first color formats appeared and two years
since variable fonts emerged. OpenType Layout has debuted in 1996/1999 and
it took a long time to get a reasonable deployment. Let’s wait and see
where the community consensus leads us!

Best,
Adam


On Wed, 26 Sep 2018 at 22:46, Levantovsky, Vladimir <
Vladimir.Levantovsky@monotype.com> wrote:

> Note that the latest version of the OpenType spec has the following
> language in it:
> "Some implementations may support use of animations—either SVG animation
> or CSS animation. Note that support for animation is optional and is not
> recommended in fonts intended for wide distribution."
>
> Cheers,
> Vlad
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Leonard Rosenthol <lrosenth@adobe.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2018 10:55 PM
> To: Jonathan Kew <jfkthame@gmail.com>; public-svgopentype@w3.org
> Subject: RE: animation in SVG-in-OT glyphs
>
> I would support (with much fanfare!) dropping this feature!!
>
> Leonard
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan Kew <jfkthame@gmail.com>
> Sent: Monday, September 24, 2018 4:45 PM
> To: public-svgopentype@w3.org
> Subject: animation in SVG-in-OT glyphs
>
> Among the various implementations of SVG-in-OpenType, how widely supported
> is animation of the SVG glyphs?
>
> Is this a feature that people consider valuable, or should we consider
> dropping it in the interests of simplification and greater uniformity
> across implementations?
>
> Jonathan
>
>
>