EOT Lite - possible outcomes

Levantovsky, Vladimir wrote:
>> Chris Wilson wrote:
>> 
>> Robert O'Callahan wrote:
>>> If "EOT Lite" fonts are to work in IE <= 8, then they must have the
>>> problems I described. Authors will need to implement Referer
>>> checking, otherwise fonts linked across domains will work in IE.
>>> And rootstring data will be treated differently by different
>>> browsers, if it is present, even though you say it shouldn't be.
>> 
>> No-o – I think if there’s no referrer, then it would work in IE.  I
>> forget the internal details of the string match, but I would presume
>> that can be worked around.  I was presuming when I read the proposal
>> that it would mean rootstrings weren’t present?  Yes, if a rootstring
>> WERE inserted into the file, it might NOT match in older IE versions;
>> bummer.  Don’t do that (in your generation tool).

> EOT version 1.0 doesn’t even have a place for root string to be
> inserted. I’d assume that the only difference between EOT 1.0 and EOT
> Lite would be compression (which is optional for authors to use but
> is required for UA to support). I guess EOT Lite just removes that
> option.

I want to make sure we're on the same map here. Do you think that
Monotype and other commercial font vendors would be happy with EOT Lite
given the following status:

(1) EOT Lite font files do not include rootstrings
(2) EOT Lite font files do not include compression
(3) EOT Lite font files do not require same-origin restrictions

Note that (1) and (2) are required so that Firefox, Safari and Opera can
implement EOT Lite. The (3) is required for MSIE compatibility, so we
have no choices here.

Combining (1), (2) and (3) gets you the result that any EOT Lite font
file accessible on the net can be linked by any CSS file anywhere. And
that CSS file can be linked by an HTML page from anywhere.

You do realize that this does not prevent linking and using EOT Lite
font files without a proper license and there's no protection of any
kind except that one cannot simply copy EOT Lite font file into his
operating system's font folder? One can copy an EOT Lite font file from
a remote server to his own server and it would work just fine.

If this is all okay, I'm for it. In practice, the results are:

(A) true interoperability between browsers (including MSIE)
(B) prevent interoperability with the OS (for now)

The (A) comes with the cost of requiring a new font format (for everyone
else but Microsoft) but it has the benefit of being compatible with
MSIE. The (B) is a side-effect of (A) and can be fixed by OS vendors.

-- 
Mikko