Re: Fonts WG Charter feedback

On 1 Jul 2009, at 16:07, Sylvain Galineau wrote:

> Ascender's proposal does not wrap anything. EOT did for compression  
> purposes, as well as to
> embed a root string for same-origin check purposes (the feature some  
> renamed 'DRM').

Right. Personally, I have no objection to Ascender's proposal, but I  
would suggest that the approach I have recently outlined would offer  
two major advantages (and no significant drawbacks) in comparison: (1)  
because it is primarily a targeted compression format, it cannot be  
branded as "obfuscation merely for the sake of breaking  
interoperability"; and (2) making font compression standard on the web  
will reduce bandwidth requirements associated with using linked fonts.

>
> The goal and benefit are web font interoperability across all  
> browsers and enabling
> authors to use any font licensed for web use, whether free or  
> commercial. Compared
> to the current situation, this is *very* tangible !
>
> And yes, this is well beyond the scope of this mailing list (and  
> group). Such an effort
> could also take a substantial amount of time to specify and deploy  
> compared to a focused lightweight alternative.
> I personally do not want to see the 'perfect' or ideal generic  
> solution delay the good working one.

Likewise. What I have tried to do is to offer a solution that I  
believe could be deployed rapidly, addresses the legitimate concerns  
of the various stakeholders, provides users with tangible benefits of  
both compression (efficiency) and interoperability, and that if  
accepted on its merits need not suffer the negativity associated in  
some quarters with "obfuscation".

JK

Received on Wednesday, 1 July 2009 15:29:47 UTC