Re: "Save Page As"

Hi John!

On 22 November 2010 23:08, John Hudson <tiro@tiro.com> wrote:
> Dave Crossland wrote:
>
>> I would consider a particular font to be part of the *content* of the
>> web page, just like a background image.
>
> Presumably a background image is not replaceable with a different image
> without altering the content of the page.

I kindly disagree.

It is tempting to draw a semantic difference between background-image:
url() images and <img> images. Eg,

<img src="leaf.jpg" title="Leaf." />

<div style="background-image: url('leaf.jpg')">In botany, a leaf is an
above-ground plant organ specialized for the process of
photosynthesis. For this purpose, a leaf is typically flat (laminar)
and thin. As an evolutionary trait, the flatness of leaves works to
... </div>

However, if we think more broadly than extended-reading-text-heavy
pages, it seems that background-image: url() images could be integral
to the meaning and understanding of a page, just like fonts.

Content and style can not always be cleanly separated.

For example, eCards are popular. If I get a nice eCard from a family
member and wish to Save Page As, I expect to be able to render the
page as it was originally shown to me. Probably I can't retrieve the
page again, and it won't be on web.archive.org

> Note that I am not saying that a linked .woff definitely should not be
> locally saved -- so long as it is not made available to other applications
> and documents, and remains used only to display the content of the
> particular web page with which it was saved, as stated in the WOFF spec --,
> only that I don't think the parallel you've tried to make is compelling, and
> it remains debatable whether a linked font should be considered part of the
> content of a page.

Thanks for clarifying :-)

> Now, if you want to say that the 'Web page, complete' save option is
> intended to faithfully preserve the particular *appearance* of the page in
> the saving browser, and not just the content of the page -- bearing in mind
> that there are no guarantees that the appearance will be the same in any
> other browser used to view the offline content --, then you have a case for
> locally saving the linked fonts.

Yes; the 2 options, "complete" and "HTML only", seem to support both
appearance saving and content-only saving scenarios.

> But it seems to me up to the individual
> browser makers to determine the intention of the save functions in their
> products,

Oh yes, I didn't mean to imply that browsers should be suggested to
save WOFFs in this way.

I sought clarification that if browsers do save WOFFs in this way that
they are not violating the spec as currently drafted, and have found
it :-)

> and the fact that they have chosen not to include linked fonts in
> the saved items suggests to me that they don't see preservation of
> particular page appearance, with regard to preferred font, as the intention,
> perhaps because CSS tends to provide for the very situation of displaying
> the text content in other fonts according to a fallback list.

To me it says that they didn't think about it yet :-)

-- 
Cheers
Dave

Received on Monday, 22 November 2010 16:30:33 UTC