RE: TT and subtitling

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robin Berjon [mailto:robin.berjon@expway.fr] 
> Sent: Friday, January 31, 2003 11:16 AM
> To: Glenn A. Adams
> Cc: Johnb@screen.subtitling.com; public-tt@w3.org
> Subject: Re: TT and subtitling
> 
> 
> Glenn A. Adams wrote:
> >     I would personally like to see us provide some sort of support
> >     for downloadable fonts. I see the lack of such support to be
> >     a barrier to internationalization as well as service 
> for minority
> >     communities in markets where the default fonts would otherwise
> >     not support their needs. On the other hand, I admit 
> that requiring
> >     a font rasterizer in every device would be a significant burden
> >     for some non-trivial set of devices, and, therefore, we can't
> >     mandate in all cases. At least we should provide support through
> >     the content for either inline font representations or 
> for reference
> >     to out-of-line font representations.
> 
> [sorry if the above is strangely formatted, conversion from 
> HTML mail does that 
> sometimes]
> 
> Couldn't we use SVG fonts here? It would seem to be a perfect 
> fit for the task. 
> SVG Basic and Tiny define a subset of the font 
> capabilities[1] that have been 
> shown to be suitable to constrained devices.

Yes, this is certainly a possibility. However, I wonder if these
capabilities have indeed been implemented in any small footprint
devices yet. I have heard from some sources that "SVG Tiny is not
nearly tiny enough", and the reason the tend to give is the inclusion
of the basic font module.

One potential issue with the SVG font format is its apparent
lack of support for bitmap as opposed to outline glyph representations.
I would like to have seen a mechanism in SVG fonts that would support
the use of a "data:..." URI in which one may embed a bitmap directly.
Perhaps there is such support and I simply haven't discovered it.

Of course I realize very well the lack of device interoperatibility
entailed by sole reliance upon the use of prerasterized glyph images;
however, this is still a common mechanism used in a number of regions,
such as in East Asia.

> [1]http://www.w3.org/TR/SVGMobile/#sec-fonts

G.

Received on Friday, 31 January 2003 11:52:15 UTC