Re: Fonts WG Charter feedback

Håkon, your analysis of Microsoft's motivation is perfectly plausible as 
a partial explanation of their resistance to TTF/OTF web linking. [I 
don't think it is a complete explanation because, just as you 
acknowledge that there are 'hard-working people inside Microsoft who
honestly believe in the goodness of the web and her standards', I know 
that there are people at MS who genuinely care about what happens to the 
fonts: both Microsoft's own fonts and those of other developers, vendors 
and publishers.]

But your comments imply that the only resistance to TTF/OTF linking is 
from Microsoft. In terms of browser makers, this may be the case, but 
there is also resistance to TTF/OTF linking from the makers, sellers and 
owners of fonts, and I don't think that should be ignored -- despite 
Aryehs's suggestion that that the opinions of anyone other than browser 
makers are 'pragmatically irrelevant' -- because it doesn't need to be 
the case. It may be convenient for you and for the W3C to just ignore 
the makers, sellers and owners of fonts, but there are benefits to 
winning them over. I don't think any of us are committed to EOT as a 
solution, and I suspect many would be willing to support a TTF/OTF 
solution if a distinction were maintainable between using fonts to 
display web content and using the web as a free font distribution 
system. Simply put, we're looking for the thing that distinguishes web 
font linking from giving away our product.

John Hudson

Received on Sunday, 5 July 2009 20:43:12 UTC