Re: I expect all foundries to start offering web font licenses within 6 months.

Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:

> Moz has certainly talked about considering *plain* EOT, but having the
> patent situation turn them off.  With that thrown out (EOT Lite
> doesn't use compression), they might be amenable.

> No clue about the Opera or Webkit folks, though.

> IE's unwillingness seems to mostly stem from foundries' fright over
> TTFs on the web.  There's a slim chance that this could tip them over.
>  I won't hold my breath, but I'd add everyone to my Xmas-gift list if
> they did so.

The thing to remember about Microsoft is that they are both a browser 
maker and a major client for custom font development. As I have been 
stating repeatedly, it is not only foundries that are concerned about 
exposure of fonts on the web, but also companies that have invested in 
fonts as assets that add value to their products and/or their corporate 
identity. I suspect Microsoft has probably spent more money -- millions 
of dollars -- on custom font development than any other company on the 
planet. They treat fonts very seriously, and understand the value that 
they add to MS products. I don't think they are ever going to support 
naked TTF/OTF linking: if they had any inclination to do so, they 
wouldn't have bothered inventing EOT in the first place.

So the question now is whether interoperability is found via EOT Lite 
(with either release of the Monotype compression patents or future 
implementation of some other form of compression) or via a wrapper 
format such as Tal and Erik have proposed?

___


Re. TTFs with corrupted name tables: that's a hack and while, like most 
hacks, it eloquently expresses both frustration and creativity, it isn't 
something with which I, as a font developer, am comfortable. I need to 
be able to offer quality assurances to clients, which means I want to 
have a standard, a clear specification and validation tools, and to know 
that if a font doesn't behave as expected in a given application it is 
probably the application's fault and not mine. A lot of my clients are 
software developers, and they expect this kind of quality assurance, and 
neither they nor I like hacks because hacks have a habit of coming 
undone at a future date.

John Hudson

Received on Wednesday, 15 July 2009 15:59:35 UTC