Re: Merits and deficiencies of EOT Lite

John Daggett wrote:

> Maybe this is just me but implementing EOT-Lite in non-IE browsers
> without revving IE effectively handicaps CFF fonts, TTF fonts would
> be favored for market reasons rather than on technical merits. CFF
> font vendors would be under market pressure to offer TTF versions of
> their fonts and switch to using a TTF tool chain.  Clients would be
> advised, "you should use TTF fonts because IE doesn't support CFF
> fonts" and I'm guessing that stigma would outlive it's validity.

There is already a TT bias for the web, just as there are the remnants 
of a once strong PS bias for imagesetters. I think web designers will be 
advising their clients 'You should use TTF fonts because CFF fonts look 
like crap and are hard to read at text sizes' long before they get 
around to saying 'And IE doesn't support CFF fonts'.

Without significant improvement in CFF rasterisation, I think a natural 
divide will emerge between CFF fonts for headlines and display 
typography and TTF for text. This won't be the first time that a format 
distinction has split along these lines: in the old days, you might get 
your headline set at one typesetting shop with one machine, and your 
text set at another shop on a different machine.

On the subject of better rasterisation of CFF fonts, I'm looking forward 
to the Win7 compatible Firefox written to make use of DWrite instead of 
GDI :)

JH

Received on Tuesday, 28 July 2009 22:45:46 UTC