Re: .webfont Proposal

John Daggett wrote:
> 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.

Thomas Lord gives a good reason against it when he writes:
> My objection in part to using the license record of the name table [...]
> A generic solution - a container format - a wrapper format - can nail the issue once and for all across all media types.

Another thing is, what you suggest still requires that browsers do not support any TTFs/OTFs which do not have the appropriate name table license record. See earlier arguments pro web-format-only and contra TTF/OTF plus web-format.

John Daggett wrote:
> 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.

Such a hack results in a buggy TTF/OTF. (And has been considered by collegues already.) Instead, a different format with a different suffix clearly signals that the file at hand is NOT a buggy TTF/OTF but a special web-font.
An observation: Mozilla's site speaks of "downloadable fonts", Apple's and Opera's sites speak of "(CSS) web fonts". This latter term makes it rather easy to communicate that a web font is a special file, of a special format, and is not the same as a "normal" font.

In sum, you are saying that we should leave everything as is.

Karsten

Received on Thursday, 9 July 2009 21:46:52 UTC