Re: .webfont Proposal 2

On 5 Aug 2009, at 02:09, Mark Tomlin wrote:

> So to make sure I get this straight, a .webfont file is basically a
> zipped directory containing tff files or some other format font with
> an XML file that tells the 'reader' who the font was made by, who it
> belongs to and what the font is. Information that could also be
> included in the info.xml is then when the bold html tag is applied to
> an element, what part of the file to read.
>
> Helvetica.webfont
> {
> 	info.xml
> 	fontdata
> 	{
> 		Helvetica.tff
> 		Helvetica Bold.tff
> 		Helvetica Italic.tff
> 		Helvetica Bold-Italic.tff
> 	}
> }
>
> I do like that this allow for basically anyone who has a text editor
> and zip compression software on their computer to make there own
> ..webfont. But then, I could also be getting this completely wrong.

I hope we won't end up with something like this. First, putting  
multiple faces into a single file like this will mean that in many  
cases, the client ends up downloading the entire family even if the  
page only uses some of the faces. That's a waste of bandwidth and will  
slow down page load.

Second, the CSS @font-face construct already provides a mechanism for  
loading a collection of faces into a family, so let's not complicate  
things by duplicating this at a different level. (Anyhow, it's @font- 
FACE, not @font-FAMILY; don't confuse the model.)

JK

Received on Wednesday, 5 August 2009 14:33:11 UTC