Size-specific font selection in a webfonts environment?

With Windows 8.1, Microsoft is shipping the first fonts -- Matthew 
Carter's Sitka family -- that include new OS/2 table data indicating 
targeted point size ranges at which to use size-specific designs. The 
aim of providing this information in the font data is, obviously, to 
enable automatic selection of the appropriate font for text set in a 
particular font size.

A technical spec for this update to the OS/2 table is expected from 
Microsoft in the coming weeks, and in the meantime I have summarised the 
mechanism involved here
http://typedrawers.com/discussion/470/new-microsoft-size-specific-design-selection-mechanism#latest
and here
http://typophile.com/node/106887

See also this specimen of the Sitka size-specific designs, if you're not 
familiar with the typical variants involved in size-specific design:
http://www.tiro.com/John/Sitka_Size_Specimen2.pdf


I'm keen to understand how this mechanism might best operate in a 
webfonts environment (particularly with dynamic text that might be 
displaying at different sizes on different devices or layouts), and 
whether automatic size-specific design selection would require any 
modifications or extensions to the CSS @font-face handling.

JH

Received on Sunday, 20 October 2013 17:50:38 UTC