Re: the truth which dare not speak it's name

Thomas Lord wrote:

> Listen, you goofy boy, everyone you're telling me about
> can begrudgingly agree to a Recommendation that requires
> both TTF/OTF AND some variation on EOT-lite.

They can? Yesterday, you were offering TTF/OTF and 'something else' that 
was an undefined, vapour format. Now that has morphed into 'some 
variation of EOT-lite'?

As I said yesterday, if one format is giving away the font, the other 
format would need to be something significantly stronger on protections. 
Frankly, it would need to be strong enough that the browser makers and 
W3C wouldn't want anything to do with it. It isn't EOT-lite.

Again, I think having two formats is stupid and looks like trying to 
built a solution around what different vested interests might possibly, 
grudgingly agree to. I tend to think that solutions should proceed from 
understanding of problems and goals, and I don't think the problems and 
goals for fonts on the web are understood. As far as I can tell, they 
haven't even been catalogued and described. When I started talking about 
clients for custom fonts and their goals as both font owners and web 
authors, people reacted like this was news and something they had never 
considered. It shouldn't be news and it should have been considered 
before anyone went blithely into supporting a format that is so clearly 
at odds with the goals of this user community.

Different user communities for web fonts are going to have different 
goals, meaning different fonts, different licensing requirements, and 
different concerns about other people having access to those fonts. I 
don't think creating multiple font formats solves the problems that 
these differences present. It may be solve the differences of opinions 
and vested interest that exist among the browser makers, font vendors 
and others contributing to the standards process, but that shouldn't be 
confused with solving the problems of font use on the web.


JH


PS I'm away for the next two days.

Received on Wednesday, 8 July 2009 05:27:09 UTC