RE: EOT & DMCA concerns

> From: www-font-request@w3.org [mailto:www-font-request@w3.org] On
> Behalf Of John Daggett
> Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 6:06 PM

> My other concern is whether EOT-Lite is really going to be
> interoperable or not with <= IE8.  I haven't really done enough
> testing yet but the few tests that I've done makes me wonder how solid
> @font-face support is in IE.  IE6 only supports loading a single font
> per family name, so to support IE6 authors will need to use
> IE6-specific styles.

True, but this is hardly  the only issue authors face with IE6. And while
they may elect to not bother using this feature with IE6 (as they already do
for others), IE7 and IE8 are out there.


> If authors conclude that using @font-face in IE is too flakey or
> cumbersome and instead opt for a mixture of @font-face in non-IE
> browsers and image replacement techniques in IE, then the key
> advantage of EOT-Lite is lost.

If it's so bad as requiring image replacement in IE then I'd worry
that web fonts won't see much use i.e. the problem would be bigger
than EOTL. And if your font is commercial, you'll have to use image
replacement across all browsers if no one supports EOTL anyway.


> Others seem to view EOT-Lite as a stepping stone format that would be
> followed by a better .webfont/ZOT/something-else format.  But another
> new format would need to offer a big marginal advantage to offset the
> disruption supporting yet another format would cause.

I lean towards being one of them. What kind of specific disruption(s) are we
Talking about though ?

>
> Clearly the ideal is to have one format that font vendors are
> comfortable with and that authors find convenient, dependable and easy
> to use.  How much EOT-Lite or a new format deviates from this ideal
> requires more testing.
>
Sounds good to me. We've indicated we're willing to support an alternative; it will
Certainly be a lot easier if the case to do so is made fairly, openly and honestly.

Received on Wednesday, 5 August 2009 01:19:11 UTC