Agenda, action items and suggested WOFF changes

Hello WG,

Our next call will be held on Wednesday, May 12th at
US West Coast - 13:00
US East Coast - 16:00
Central Europe - 22:00
Japan - 05:00



Zakim telephone bridge:

     +1.617.761.6200 (Boston) or

     +33.4.89.06.34.99 (Nice) or

     +44.117.370.6152 (Bristol)
     with conference code 3668 ("FONT")

As proposed by John Daggett (with support from many WG members) we will dedicate this call to review the entire WOFF specification section by section. The main goal of this review is to highlight the potential areas that need further detailed discussions or additional explanations.

I've spent some time addressing the action item taken at the last call (proposal for embedding restriction language) and reviewing the WOFF spec, and would like to propose the following for your consideration:


1.       Editorial changes - create more rigid structure for the spec, where all essential parts of the field descriptions are concentrated in the chapter that introduces the field - e.g.  a single paragraph for each field of the WOFF Table Directory entry; metaOffset, metaLength and metaOrigLength to be explicitly defined in the WOFF Header chapter, which can then be referenced in chapter 6 "Extended Metadata Block", etc.

2.       Suggestion to combine chapter 6 and Appendix A into a single chapter "Extended Metadata Block".

3.       Consider creating a "Recommendations" section which will summarize all non-normative statements.

4.       Combine all statements related to WOFF creation tools into a separate chapter (e.g. it would include last 3 paragraphs of chapter 4, handling of the embedding restrictions, etc.).

5.       Add the following language to address font embedding permissions:

Font Embedding permissions and their handling
User Agents MUST NOT check the level of font embedding permissions set in a font delivered using WOFF format. In general, it is assumed that the level of font embedding permissions is set according to original font license, and that web authors have made adequate efforts to make sure that the font license and font embedding permission settings correspond to intended use of a font on the web. User Agents MUST NOT permanently install fonts delivered in a WOFF format as system resident fonts, and SHOULD only use downloaded fonts to render the content of a webpage that WOFF resources are associated with.

WOFF creations tools MUST verify that a font converted to the WOFF format does not have font embedding permissions set to "Restricted License Embedding", and SHOULD generate an error message when this condition is encountered. Fonts that have "Restricted License Embedding" set as the only level of embedding allowed MUST NOT be converted to WOFF format. WOFF conversion tools MAY check other font embedding permission levels to inform the user about particular level of embedding allowed.

Thank you,
Vladimir