RE: WebFonts WG Kick-off (was RE: WOFF submission published)

On Wednesday, April 21, 2010 6:46 AM Chris Lilley wrote:
> 
> On Tuesday, April 20, 2010, 11:00:36 PM, Vladimir wrote:
> 
> LV> To start
> LV> the creative thinking process, I would like to suggest a list of
> LV> items for consideration, and I would encourage all of you to add
> LV> items to the list as you see appropriate. In no particular order,
> LV> other than maybe the complexity of things we need to address, I
> believe we should:
> 
> LV> 1) Discuss and finalize the WOFF specification
> 
> I would like to see us walk through the spec, as a group. Either in
> email or on a call. Partly to ensure we are all up to speed, partly to
> look for ambiguous wording, and partly to look for missing, essential
> features if there are any.

Very good suggestion. If history is any example, the discussions that happen on the www-font list proved to be valuable and meaningful resource for progressing the work forward. I suggest that we should start with email discussions (everybody can do it at his own pace and independent of the time zone differences) and then follow-up with the conference calls.

> 
> LV>    - are there any features that we believe may be missing, or
> LV> would be useful to add in order to make WOFF "future-proof"?
> LV>    - what is the metadata information that we believe would be
> LV> good for browsers to expose to users, and whether the existing
> LV> metadata fields would be sufficient to convey the information we
> want to see exposed?
> 
> I would certainly like to see some examples of metadata statements. We
> could collect these on the wiki, for example. Its much easier to copy
> an example; good examples help adoption.

Agree. Personally, I find examples to be sometimes even more valuable than a spec (e.g. in an attempt to learn something new I'd usually start with an example complementing it with the spec reading).

> 
> LV> 2) Decide on the conformance requirements:
> LV>    - whether any references to same-origin restrictions and the
> LV> CORS mechanism to relax them should be part of the WOFF spec, or
> LV>    - whether it should be a separate deliverable from the group,
> and
> LV>    - whether this should be part of the conformance requirements.
> 
> Yes, we need to decide that.
> 
> In my opinion, regardless of where that aspect of conformance goes, it
> should not be optional. Same-origin (as a default, with CORS to relax
> it) only really works if its required.
> 

After spending some years involved in the standards work with different groups and different technologies, I developed a strong 'personal' position against anything being optional. If a component is needed and useful it ought to be required. Optional components create a mess for all parties involved - implementers have to make their own (sometimes not well-informed) decisions on what to support or not to support, and anything optional sure means that the developers cannot rely on it.
Unless we come to a deadlock, I would strongly encourage the group to consider everything required for conformance, and I absolutely agree that same-origin restriction will only work if required.

Regards,
Vladimir

Received on Wednesday, 21 April 2010 17:55:08 UTC