RE: Webfont compression

Thursday, July 23, 2009 Vladimir Levantofsky
<Vladimir.levantovsky@monotypeimaging.com>:

Vlad,

I questioned Dave DeWitt at the TypeCon 2009 Web Fonts panel about
Monotype's pledge to take MTX public domain or a functional equivalent. Dave
could not commit firmly. Can you?
We've done a dance around this on typophile.com and still I sense hedging,
bobbing, and weaving.
"We'll make it open, IF..." is what I'm still hearing. What's the IF? Is
there an IF or are you just going to do it?
Enough already. There's plenty of reason to just do it so that it can be put
back into the new EOT. 
It would also be seen as a gesture of goodwill by all concerned. At least,
I'd play it up that way.

Unequivocally, what's the deal, Vlad?

Cheers,

rich

-----Original Message-----
From: www-font-request@w3.org [mailto:www-font-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of
Levantovsky, Vladimir
Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 10:46 AM
To: Chris Fynn; www-font@w3.org
Cc: karsten luecke
Subject: RE: Webfont compression

On Tuesday, July 21, 2009 3:59 PM John Daggett wrote:
> 
> Any of the solutions that have been proposed (webfont, EOT-Lite, ZOT) 
> are relatively easy to implement, assuming no DRMish features are
involved.
> 

On Thursday, July 23, 2009 7:41 AM Chris Fynn wrote:
> 
> In this case, the so-called "interoperability" seems to be just a
> pragmatic way of delivering a working cross-platform @font-face
> solution to as many users as possible within the shortest possible
time.
> 

On Thursday, July 23, 2009 9:12 AM Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
> 
> It so happens that EOT Lite was stumbled upon as a format
> that is supported by all currently relevant versions of IE, and is
> fairly uncontroversial.
> 
> The fact that we can make web fonts work in IE6 without any of the
> more distasteful baggage of the EOT format is a glorious coincidence
> that we would be remiss in not taking advantage of, for the sake of us
> authors who just want to use pretty fonts yesterday.
> 
> After that gets standardized, go crazy making a simpler format.  The
> basic work will have been completed, and the urgent need to do
> something, *anything*, will no longer be present.  You can spend time
> gathering opinions and debating technical points then.
>

Indeed, this says it all!

As a result of the long and productive discussions we "stumbled upon"
EOT-Lite solution that can be easily implemented and allows delivering a
working cross-platform @font-face support to as many users as possible,
and in the shortest time possible. And because EOT-Lite is also
supported by font vendors, it does mean that authors will have an
opportunity to use custom fonts starting "yesterday", for the benefits
of billions of web users around the globe.

Once we satisfied the urge to have a working @font-face solution, we can
make a stub at developing a new  solution. Isn't it the way how the
whole web has emerged - delivering a quick solution that works and
refining it later? Support for legacy implementations has never stopped
the technical progress, and I am sure that as soon as we deliver working
cross-platform support for @font-face today, we will be better prepared
to introduce a new, better solution that will become the de-facto
standard 5 years from now.

Regards,
Vladimir

Received on Thursday, 23 July 2009 15:30:33 UTC