Re: WOFF2 file extension and media type

Hello Vladimir,

Wednesday, June 25, 2014, 4:03:43 PM, you wrote:


> I’ve been contacted privately by a developer who asked me about two
> things – what would be the appropriate font file extension for WOFF2
> and what is the media type to be used when the fonts in WOFF2 format are served.

I agree that we should define this.

> We haven’t yet discussed the file extension at all – the assumed
> file extension was .woff2 although I am not sure if having
> five-character-long file extension is okay in all circumstances.

The main restriction on file extensions was those older operating
systems which required an extension to be three or less characters.
(MS-DOS and older versions of Windows (1,2,3,3.1,95,98,ME).

This was a problem in the early days, .html thus became .htm on DOS
and non-NT versions of Windows. Since Windows 2000, the three letter
extension is not a factor any more.

>  As
> an alternative, I suggest to consider .wof2  but this is merely a
> proposal –

.woff is four letters and has not been a problem, so my suggestion is
to formalize the assumed .woff2 and it is simple and easy.

> I’d rather have us to decide on this and announce it
> publicly as soon as possible – the folks are waiting and the guy who
> contacted me with these questions is not alone, I am sure.

Agreed.

> As to the media type – we did discuss it in the past and while we
> all seem to agree that having the top-level ‘font’ type would be
> ideal – we are not there yet. Applying for the top-level type would
> be a huge undertaking and something that  may not bring the results
> soon enough for developers who need it now.

Yes.

>  I am wondering if we
> should (at least in the near term) consider something similar to
> what we did for WOFF 1.0 and register a media type as part of the
> “application” sub-tree, e.g. “application/font-woff2”  Comments?

I agree that we should do this, and doing so does not preclude any
later change if font/* goes ahead. Developers need this now.

I will take an action to draft a MIME registration appendix, similar
to the one for WOFF 1.0.




-- 
Best regards,
 Chris                            mailto:chris@w3.org

Received on Wednesday, 25 June 2014 14:12:33 UTC