Re: cutting to the chase

Thomas Lord wrote:

> TTF/OTF is widely implemented and used.

It is reasonably widely implemented. It is hardly used at all.

EOT is more widely implemented, in terms of the number of active 
browsers being used, and probably still more widely used in terms of the 
number of sites making use of EOTs (especially in countries whose 
scripts have not been well-supported by the availability of 'web safe' 
fonts).

I don't consider any of these facts to indicate a 'rough consensus' on 
EOT, any more than the fact that some other browsers have implemented 
naked font linking represents any kind of consensus on that technology.

Perhaps you don't understand what the word consensus means.

There is no consensus on naked font linking and there is no consensus on 
EOT, because both these formats are rejected outright by major stakeholders.

The only consensus building I see taking place is toward defining an 
interoperable format that is agreeable to all the stakeholders (which is 
what consensus implies: not trying to force a political showdown by 
hijacking a standards process, as you suggest). I see people discussing 
technical questions around such a format, garnering support for ideas, 
rejecting other ideas because they block consensus: all the things that 
I usually associate with consensus building. It takes time, and it 
should take time.

When someone says that they want to 'cut to the chase', that pretty 
reliably indicates that they realise that their favoured solution is 
losing out to the consensus options, and they want to strong-arm the 
process to get their way. The fact that almost no one among the actual 
stakeholders has even mentioned naked font linking at all in the past 
couple of weeks reinforces this impression.

JH

Received on Monday, 3 August 2009 03:49:40 UTC