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

Saturday, July 18, 2009 Håkon Wium Lie <howcome@opera.com>:
>Using WEFT, authors had to scan their HTML pages to create EOT files.
>This was highly inconvenient and proably the major reason why nobody used
it. You're saying that the solutions >in development will be even more
inconvenient?

To meet the "garden fence" test, yes. Out of consideration for the guys from
TypeKit and others involved with their project, I don't want to explain
further. But soon enough, you'll be able to check for yourself on this.

Don't agree with your assumptions about WEFT and why EOT got relatively
little use, but Sylvain or Chris Wilson are in a better position to address
that, they undoubtedly have more facts about actual usage.

FWIW - I am not unsympathetic to your objections about any mention of root
strings. I've read a lot of the case law - Napster, Grokster, et al - and I,
too, would prefer to steer clear of any slippery slopes that can cause
unexpected troubles down the road. And requiring the user agent to reveal
the presence of an alternate style sheet versus requiring the user agent to
reveal licensing information are two very different things with very
different purposes. I don't see alternate style sheets as a precedent
applicable in any way to this.

With all due respect to Tal and Erik who've obviously done clear thinking on
the matter, I think we were on firmer ground a few weeks ago talking about a
compressed file format with a new file extension. If EOT Lite is OK with the
font-makers, well, there you have a model to start with. And if EOT Lite
meets with approval in the interim, even through a "gentleman's agreement"
outside the formal W3C process, so much the better. It's hard to argue that
it isn't the quickest way to get web fonts working for the most people in
the shortest amount of time. (I can dream, can't I?)

Cheers,

rich

-----Original Message-----
From: www-font-request@w3.org [mailto:www-font-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of
Håkon Wium Lie
Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009 5:05 AM
To: rfink@readableweb.com
Cc: 'Dave Crossland'; 'Thomas Phinney'; 'www-font'
Subject: RE: I expect all foundries to start offering web font licenses
within 6 months.

Richard Fink writes:

  support for the "open" standard actually leads to higher costs for
  all concerned [..] the OTF must be pre-processed and obfuscated [and
  this] inflicts considerable inconvenience and additional cost. As
  much or more than using WEFT to create an EOT file [..] Fat or lite.

Using WEFT, authors had to scan their HTML pages to create EOT files.
This was highly inconvenient and proably the major reason why nobody
used it. You're saying that the solutions in development will be even
more inconvenient?

-h&kon
              Håkon Wium Lie                          CTO °þe®ª
howcome@opera.com                  http://people.opera.com/howcome

Received on Saturday, 18 July 2009 13:51:56 UTC