Re: .webfont Proposal

> Do you have any comments on the proposal beyond the <allow> element?

I don't think pushing font data around in XML format is going to be
efficient, especially if the data is in b64 form.  Beyond the <allow>
element, the other elements seem like they could exist within font
metadata.  Personally, I would much prefer to see a format defined for
license-related data in the license record of the name table, that way
it would work for both raw OTF/TTF and some compressed/obfuscated
format.

User agents would have a standard format which they could display in
something like a page info dialog, even show a list of URL's a font was
licensed for next to the current URL of the page, along with the license
terms and where to find/buy the font.  Having a standardized format
would make license checking robots easier to commodify, hence lower cost
for those interested in enforcing strict adherence to license
provisions.  Having a warning dialog about fonts that appear to be
improperly licensed doesn't make sense to me, you're informing the
viewer of a site when it's the author that needs to be informed.  Simply
creating a chatty annoyance Vista-style seems counter-productive.

Keep in mind that the name table for fonts linked on the web is a
throwaway in some sense, the name table is dumped either via API private
flags/name changes (Mac OS X, Windows t2embed) or hacky name table
swizzling (for loading .otf fonts on Windows).  Opera 10 beta uses the
names in the name table but that's a bug that will most likely get fixed
before shipping. In fact, it would be possible for web fonts to be
shipped without name tables altogether but then the license info would
be lost also.

John Daggett
Mozilla Japan

Received on Thursday, 9 July 2009 20:06:48 UTC