Re: WOFF and extended metadata

Sylvain, the point of my original message was to game-out an opposing viewpoint for the sake of discussion. I never took anything as self-evident. I wrote: "I have some nagging concern about it, but I'm not sure there's any proper way to address it. My concern might also be relatively abstract and not compelling to anyone else."

The answer to your question was in my original post. It was not offering it with conviction, but as a theory by which other might be compelled or not. My intention was to "run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes." John H. showed some interest, and perhaps a few others, but what ultimately happened was we cleared up some misunderstanding and got clarity about other issues. That pretty much met my expectations.

I still have concern about parts of my original argument. I don't want to see the extended metadata marginalized, because it was a major factor in foundries supporting WOFF. I am sympathetic to the concerns of browser developers. I think perhaps what's needed is for foundries to work together to ensure metadata is prevalent and predictable so that UAs will see value in exposing it.

-Christopher

On May 20, 2010, at 5:07 PM, Sylvain Galineau wrote:

> 
>> You are going way beyond the narrow context in which my question was posed.
> 
>> During the meeting, the question was asked: If a WOFF file has invalid XML metadata, should the entire file be rejected, or should only the metadata be rejected? I was only positing a case for the former.
> 
> You're not answering my question: what *for* ? You seem to assume it is self-evident that rejecting files on this basis is a good thing, or that it would make the web a demonstrably better place for font vendors. 
> I don't see that at all and I've gone much further in order to argue in the most concrete manner possible that this case has in fact not been made. 
> 
> I don't see why I should leave authors and users hanging because someone screwed up a bit of XML neither have anything to do with. And do so after wasting CPU cycles parsing data no one will read in
> the vast majority of cases. 
> 
> A trade-off is being requested from browser vendors, authors and users here. I think it's fair to expect font vendors to justify this and clearly explain what expectations they have and why and how this
> proposal fulfills  them.

Received on Friday, 21 May 2010 19:09:22 UTC