Re: Merits and deficiencies of EOT Lite (was: Combining ZOT with .webfont metadata)

On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Christopher Slye<cslye@adobe.com> wrote:
>
> On Jul 27, 2009, at 1:06 PM, Sylvain Galineau wrote:
>
>>> In the meantime, those who want to continue discussing the merits and
>>> deficiencies of EOT Lite should do so.
>>
>> I look forward to hearing about the real merits or deficiencies of
>> Ascender's proposal, preferably based on evidence and use-cases. Some of the
>> perceived or made-up ones that have been brought up before are not worth any
>> further consideration.
>
> One of the professed advantages of EOT Lite is its existing "installed base"
> (i.e. Internet Explorer). However, for those who are more interested in
> CFF-EOT fonts, there are significant and well-known deficiencies in the
> Windows/IE platform. Acknowledging that these deficiencies are bugs and/or
> "should be fixed" is something, but obviously it is more valuable to know
> that they *will* be fixed soon (to the extent that they can be fixed at
> all).
>
> Win/IE's problems with CFF are relevant for any web font format (or raw
> fonts, for that matter), but it seems obvious that MS is going to have to
> "walk the walk" if it wants to see EOT be more than a niche solution. I
> think Ascender has done MS a great favor by giving EOT a second wind as EOT
> Lite, but it's DOA if the CFF issues persist.
>
> Sylvain, what do you think? I've already heard both optimistic and
> pessimistic assessments of this situation, and I'm looking for some reason
> to trust the former.
>
> Regards,
> Christopher

Just as a point of clarification, there are two relatively distinct issues:

1) Existing IE versions don't support EOT files with OpenType CFF
contents (though the EOT format is agnostic as to CFF vs TT contents).

2) Windows default system rendering of OpenType CFF (and Type 1) fonts
is kinda stinky. Adobe worked long and hard with Microsoft to get
better rendering of OpenType CFF (even with ClearType support!) into
the WPF rasterizer, but AFAIK no browser is using that rasterizer.

Regards,

T

-- 
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up
and hurry off as if nothing ever happened."
- Sir Winston Churchill

Received on Monday, 27 July 2009 23:10:16 UTC