Re: EOT Lite - possible outcomes

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 9:55 AM, Mikko
Rantalainen<mikko.rantalainen@peda.net> wrote:
> 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.

I don't think (3) is necessary.  Let's say EOT Lite specified that all
browsers had to implement same-origin restrictions, and
Firefox/Safari/Chrome/Opera implement it like that in their first go.
IE, however, doesn't have same-origin restrictions before IE9 at
least.

If someone hotlinked your font, it would work . . . but only for IE
users.  This would probably result in complaints to the hotlinker from
his users, especially if IE's market share continues to decline.  It
would be possible to do, but it's unlikely to happen much, since it
will fail for a lot of users.

So this proposal would have a significant degree of same-origin
restriction even if old IE didn't do it.  Of course it's confusing to
have some browsers implement same-origin restrictions and some not --
but that's already the status quo with OTF/TTF.

So define EOT Lite as being the same as the EOT spec published by
Microsoft, but the root string must be null; MTX and xor obfuscation
must be disabled; same-origin restrictions are mandatory; some marker
is added that won't stop old IE versions from using it, but will allow
future ones to recognize it and implement the origin restrictions
without affecting old EOT; and a new extension is used, like .eol or
.otw.

This is functionally very similar to Ascender's proposal.  The only
important differences I can see are 1) old IE versions will render it
cross-origin, but 2) it will work in old IE versions (huge benefit!),
and 3) Microsoft's cooperation is not essential for it to be useful
(which might allow more rapid deployment, since the disputes that have
been holding us up are mostly MS vs. everyone else).  I think (2) and
(3) *far* outweigh any problem with (1).

(Yes, it will have some silly checksums and so on.  But that doesn't
make implementation much harder and it's invisible to users, so it's
not a big deal.)

> One can copy an EOT Lite font file from
> a remote server to his own server and it would work just fine.

The same is true for Ascender's (original) proposal.

Received on Thursday, 2 July 2009 18:56:06 UTC