- From: Levantovsky, Vladimir <Vladimir.Levantovsky@MonotypeImaging.com>
- Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 12:09:02 -0400
- To: "John Hudson" <tiro@tiro.com>
- Cc: "Thomas Lord" <lord@emf.net>, "Thomas Phinney" <tphinney@cal.berkeley.edu>, "Sylvain Galineau" <sylvaing@microsoft.com>, "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com>, <robert@ocallahan.org>, "John Daggett" <jdaggett@mozilla.com>, "www-font" <www-font@w3.org>
On Friday, July 31, 2009 2:20 AM John Hudson wrote: > > Vladimir wrote: > > > As I understand what the current draft says > > (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-font/2009JulSep/0780.html), > the > > EOT-Lite conforming UA will render a font if it's capable to do so, > > regardless of the presence of rootstring (i.e. completely ignoring > the > > root strings, whether mismatched or not). > > It makes sense that the EOT-Lite proposal makes such a statement about > EOT-Lite fonts. But, again, this presumes a distinction can be made > between EOT-Lite and EOT-Classic fonts when encountered in the wild, > because ignoring the rootstrings in a format that deliberately states > that rootstrings should be ignored is different from ignoring > rootstrings in a format that deliberately states that > > User Agents must validate that the page using > the embedded font is within the list of URLs > from which the embedded font object may be > legitimately referenced. [1] > > I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that a browser that fails to > follow > this when encountering an EOT-Classic font is at legal risk. If not, > why > all the fuss about DMCA? At the very least, this seems to me a question > that needs to be examined by qualified lawyers experienced with this > kind of issue. If the behavior of EOT-Lite client matches what I described in my previous email, then ignoring root strings poses no risk at all. As far as EOT-Classic is concerned, I would consider the current EOT specification as an "FYI" document, it is only a proposal and not an official standard, and cannot be enforced in any way. The only document that may ever get to the point when it can become a Recommendation is yet-to-be-written EOT-Lite specification. > > At present, the non-IE browser makers are deliberately not touching EOT > fonts because they don't want to get entangled with the rootstring > issue. They're not supporting EOT but ignoring rootstrings: they're > keeping the heck away from EOT altogether. It seems to me that they > must > continue to do so, because the status of EOT Classic fonts doesn't > magically change when EOT Lite comes along. This means that while EOT > Lite fonts can be backwards compatible with IE<=8, EOT Classic fonts > must not be forwards compatible with EOT Lite. Somehow the two formats > need to be clearly distinct at the file level, such that an EOT Lite > implementing browser can process the one but avoid the other. I believe that the distinction line will be drawn based on capabilities of the client to process a font; otherwise (again, based on the reasoning I presented in my email earlier) I believe that simply ignoring certain fields in EOT header is the best way to achieve truly interoperable solution. Regards, Vlad > > JH > > > [1] http://www.w3.org/Submission/2008/SUBM-EOT-20080305/#RootString
Received on Friday, 31 July 2009 16:09:47 UTC