Re: the discussion is over, resistance time

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 2:30 PM, Sylvain Galineau<sylvaing@microsoft.com> wrote:
>>In the case at hand, at least per Microsoft,
>>we are asked to accept the requirement of
>>using a new format on the web whose sole rationale
>>is that if other people want their programs to be
>>able to use web fonts, the programs must all be
>>changed to recognize the new format.   Programs
>>will become more bloated.  Users will encounter
>>needless conversion issues even when using publicly
>>licensed web fonts.   The maintenance burden of font
>>code in all these programs will go up.  No useful
>>functionality will be provided users that could not
>>be better provided by other means.
>>
>
> 1. I do not believe the cost of implementing any of the proposals I've seen justifies this argument.
>
> 2. Ascender's original proposal, for instance, would be trivial to implement.
>
> 3. Even if the solution was non-trivial, the combined expense on browser vendors is thoroughly dwarfed by the aggregate cost
> on all web authors and web sites of dealing with the current situation where they have to serve each font in two encodings,
> never mind the lost opportunity of using certain fonts for all browsers. The costs to web authors and the consequences for all users
> should come before the inconvenience of browser vendors, imo.
>
> 4. As for all the other programs that may want to use web fonts, we are not exactly short of excellent free libraries allowing
> anyone to create, read and write every single format browsers support today e.g. JPEG, GIF etc. I don't see why this couldn't happen
> for fonts. Your argument could as well have been made for PNG and any number of other formats. I don't see why a trivial font encoding
> is any different in this respect, or how it suddenly pushes the world beyond some line of bloatedness. Never mind who defines bloat or how.
>
> 5. Lastly, since your own proposal would involve the exact same kind of change by all software that wants to use web fonts, one would think it would be as bad an idea
> as any proposal that requires new code.
>
>
> As for font vendors, it is up to them to state whether their goals are satisfied by this or that proposal.

I agree with Sylvain on all points here.

~TJ

Received on Thursday, 2 July 2009 20:04:45 UTC