- From: John Hudson <tiro@tiro.com>
- Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2010 17:56:27 -0700
- To: public-webfonts-wg@w3.org
- CC: Anne van Kesteren <annevk@opera.com>
Christopher Slye wrote: > Well, you could say that the difference between WOFF fonts and other assets (images, etc.) is that WOFF is not standardized yet. Perhaps if we could go back and do it all over again, we would require same origin restriction* (with CORS) for images and other assets too. It is also worth pointing out, perhaps, that a font isn't analogous to an image or a video: its a piece of software, a little machine that typesets text. Whereas the value of an image, video or even a script is generally linked directly to the content of the image or video or to the immediate function of the script, the value of a font is essentially limited only by the amount of text in the world that it might be used to typeset, which is to say practically unlimited. A web served font is in some ways more analogous to a web served application -- not least in including executable code and being a possible medium for virus infection or trojan attack --, and specifically to applications that enable creation of new content. Fonts are tools for making text. I've seen fonts -- particularly in the context of the web -- compared to all sorts of other things over the years (downloadable music files has been a popular one: conflating a content creation tool with a content consumption medium). I've come to the conclusion that fonts are pretty unique, and there is no direct analogy to be made to other tools, media, etc. John Hudson
Received on Wednesday, 28 April 2010 00:57:04 UTC