Re: Combining ZOT with .webfont metadata

Tal Leming wrote:

> > Some of the redundancy is shared with CSS; the @font-face declarations
> > contain information about the format and the name of the font (to be
> > used in 'font' and 'font-family'). What if there is a mismatch between
> > the format declared in @font-face and inside the info.xml? The
> > .webfont specification should specify who is right.
> 
> We think that the CSS would specify "webfont" as the format. The User  
> Agent would look at the format specified in the info.xml and load it  
> appropriately. We thought that this would actually make it easier for  
> web authors. They wouldn't have to know the specifics about the core  
> font formats.

Both Håkon's original remark and Tal's response aren't quite right
here.  The names and styles specified in @font-face rules are
*completely* under author control, neither the name table contents or
info.xml contents have or should have any effect on font usage or
rendering.  

Example:

  @font-face {
    font-family: Wild Screaming Pigs;
    src: url(Gentium.ttf) format("truetype");
  }

  body { font-family: Wild Screaming Pigs, Georgia, serif; }
  
This is both for security reasons, so that the fonts used in one page
have no effect on the rendering of a separate page using unrelated
stylesheets, and to give authors control over how fonts are used in
their pages.  This is why the name table obfuscation methods work
without affecting webpage usage.

The format hint is optional, it really indicates the format a given
font is *not*.  If a format hint indicates that a font is a SVG font,
no attempt is made to load it as a TrueType font.  The user agent
still needs to determine whether the font data is valid or not.  Any
format sniffing is confined to the set of formats defined by the
format hint.

In fact, my original reading was of the latest .webfont proposal was
that loading a font with a given info.xml file would be the equivalent
of loading the fontdata as a raw font.  In other words, the contents
of the info.xml file have no effect on load behavior or usage.  Did I
read this incorrectly?

Received on Sunday, 26 July 2009 19:02:21 UTC