Re: Partial fonts

Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:

> 3. It's still purely an obfuscation mechanic, with no benefit to us
> authors.  (Many/most of the other proposals give us at least *some*
> benefit.)

The benefit to authors of any scheme that offers protection of font data 
is that they might get to legitimately license the typefaces they want 
to use in their documents. That's the benefit the authors get if you can 
persuade the font makers to license their fonts for use in a web format.

Previously, you've made comments that suggest a commodified view of 
fonts -- 'If you don't license your fonts to this market, someone else 
will come along and license their fonts instead' --, which misses the 
whole point of what makes any given font desirable: the individual 
typeface that it embodies. Fonts are not interchangeable commodities. 
What people want, what adds value, is the particular typeface that suits 
their needs. The typeface is the benefit, not the format. Just as it 
always has been. There was no 'benefit to authors' in little pieces of 
metal, or in spinning photodiscs or glass negatives, other than the 
typeface that they embodied. Device-independent digital font formats 
have given users many practical benefits that they never had in previous 
font formats, but it doesn't follow from this that 'benefit to authors' 
is a necessary criterion for a font format.

JH

Received on Tuesday, 7 July 2009 01:25:10 UTC