Re: WOFF without SOR?

On Jan 26, 2011, at 11:33 AM, Sylvain Galineau wrote:

>> It undermines confidence. It might or might not be enough.
> 
> Sorry to hear that. I didn't realize this was going to be a surprise.

Not sure if it's surprising, but it's disappointing.

>> I'm concerned that SOR-for-WOFF might eventually ebb away if it's not
>> completely supported at the outset. You could credibly argue that Opera's
>> market share is too insignificant to worry about, but if there's a
>> particular market or region where Opera dominates (or comes to dominate),
>> then the impact of cross-site linking becomes more worrisome. Certain
>> foundries might want to concentrate on specific markets or regions, and if
>> they find that Opera has, say, a 60% share there, then it's a problem.
> 
> Doesn't the cost primarily fall on web sites though ? In those locales where
> Opera does especially well they're the ones who might find themselves having 
> to add Referrer checks to comply with their license and/or to mitigate 
> hot-linking. To the extent other browsers do this transparently for them I'd 
> expect the pressure to be on Opera to conform. 
> 
> And afaik there's nothing stopping font vendors from telling customers that 
> Browsers that don't support feature X may require extra work on their end. 
> 
> So while it's an annoyance, I suspect the pressure would be on Opera to align,
> not the other way around.

Or, developers will disregard their license, post fonts like any other web asset, and be blissfully unaware of any cross-site linking. Foundries can educate, cajole, and enforce, but I think we were trying to minimize those measures.

Right about now, somebody will chime in to say foundries must be nuts if they expected a perfect world where all fonts would be perfectly protected. That would be impertinent. The point is that some foundries wished for more but accepted WOFF, and further erosion of its current protections will be, er, disappointing.

This is all a pessimistic take on the situation, but it's a viewpoint that might be relevant. Obviously I can't speak for other foundries, so I'm interested to hear other opinions.

-Christopher

Received on Wednesday, 26 January 2011 20:04:39 UTC