Re: css3-fonts: should not dictate usage policy with respect to origin

Since I've known Glenn off and on for a long time, and consider him to
be both intelligent and reasonable :-) I'm responding here in the hope
of getting some points explained more clearly.  I think people may be
talking past one another.


On Tue, 2011-06-28 at 18:13 -0600, Glenn Adams wrote:

>    - Samsung has no interest in blocking the work of the WG, and fully
>    supports the group's work;
Good...

>    - Samsung has no interest in preventing font authors or font providers
>    from protecting access to their intellectual property; we note there are
>    various ways of achieving content protection and digital rights management;
The methods have to be specified though... in an environment in which
the phrase "digital rights management" is not generally considered
positive...

>    - Samsung is not fixated on a specific result from the group, and is
>    willing to consider any reasonable option that addresses our concern;
Good...

>    - Samsung believes the issue is whether an existing implementation of
>    @font-face that does not employ same origin can claim conformance to a
>    final, published REC that wishes to apply the same origin mandate to all
>    implementations, whether new or old;

You can only claim conformance to a W3C Recommendation, of course, not
to a draft.

In addition, W3C does not do implementation certification or conformance
testing.

An existing implementation of @font-face did not "conform" to anything.
Why? Because the @font-face syntax was defined in a working draft.
Conforming to a Working Draft that can be updated at any time isn't
really a meaningful claim.

You thus presumably are not objecting that a new Recommendation will
make implementations fail to conform to something that never existed.

Obviously an implementation of v1 of a spec can't claim to conform to v2
of the spec without updating the software to reflect changes between v1
and v2.

>  the issue of whether such an old
>    implementation is "experimental" or merely "early" is unrelated to our
>    concern, since it is desirable to (finally) have a complete and final
>    specification for @font-face that can be referenced by industry compliance
>    testing and compliance certification processes;

Once there is a W3C Recommendation that defined @font-face, yes, you can
reasonably say your implementations conform to it.  If css3-fonts goes
ahead with language mandating same-origin restrictions for fonts then in
order to conform to the new Recommendation you must implement that. But,
it is not the only change since 2002, so an implementation of the 2002
drafts would not be conforming for plenty of other reasons.

"Our support of @font-face is based on 2002 drafts" would be a
reasonable statement for an implementation to make, however.

Note also that css3-fonts does not currently mandate WOFF support.

Note again also that there is no compliance certification done by W3C;
if external groups want to do something they call compliance testing
they should understand that they cannot of course brand the result as
conforming to a W3C Specification, so it's not really clear how you can
object on their behalf. They should join in their own right. Or is it
Samsung doing conformance testing?

I didn't ask specific questions but rather restated what I think -
Glenn, if you have time and think it will help, you might want to
correct anything you feel I have misstated.

In W3C Process a formal objection generally comes after people have
failed to reach consensus, and is an appeal to the w3C Director to
overrule the chair. So, obviously, W3C staff and the WG chair in
particular will have to discuss a formal objection. I can't speak for
Chris and Bert but right now my understanding would be, Samsung made
some devices or implementations of a very old draft of @font-face and
doesn't want to change those implementations, but wants to say that
Samsung implements @font-face, and is objecting to WOFF going forward
even though their existing implementations presumably won't support
WOFF. This position doesn't seem very coherent when stated so bluntly so
I am thinking I've misunderstood somewhere. Where?

Thanks!

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
I am out of the office for most of June and July.

Received on Wednesday, 29 June 2011 03:18:47 UTC