Re: Rumours of the death of "new, professionally designed typefaces" are perhaps exaggerated?

From: "Thomas Lord" <lord@emf.net>
> On Wed, 2009-08-05 at 15:57 +0600, Chris Fynn wrote:
>> right now I'm hoping for
>> a consensus on supporting EOT Lite (under another name of course)
>> mainly
>> because it will provide @font-face support to the most users in the
>> least amount of time and also because a significant number of major
>> commercial font vendors seem prepared to license fonts for the web in
>> that format.
>>
>> Of course EOTL is a compromise ~ but isn't that just what we are
>> seeking
>> here? EOTL support, especially in old versions of IE, will be less
>> than
>> perfect, but that can be lived with.
>
> Please drop the false assumption that the name is
> the only problem with EOTL.
>
> Let's call it the SNARGLFOO format, for sake of argument.
> The SNARGLFOO format is designed so that existing EOTC
> processors will render SNARGLFOO fonts.  So it is an
> extension of EOTC.  Alas, most browser makers are legally
> constrained to not implement EOTC and only one browser
> maker is in a position to offer a smooth integration of
> SNARGLFOO and EOTC.

False. EOTC has been proposed as standard by Microsoft and all
technologies related to him (MTX...) are beeing opened by Microsoft
and Monotype Imaging. Any browser could implement EOTC.

The problem is that no browser *want* to do so.

>
> Worse still, there is some nervousness that security
> considerations imply fonts need same-origin+CORS protection.
> If that nervousness is misplaced then, fine, cross-site linking
> of fonts should be unrestricted (as it already is in some
> browsers).  On the other hand, if the nervousness is not
> misplaced, then the passage of a SNARGLFOO standard would
> require the timely patching of IE<=8.  But... wait...
> if IE<=8 is to be patched, what reasons remain for the
> patch to be anything other than "add TTF/OTF w/ same-orign+CORS"?

No, IE8-- will not be patched. The IE8-- engines will have *small* 
incompatibilities
with the format. This is a fact. But there's no need to update them. If you 
had
listened to what we say in the mailing list, you would probably have known 
it.

Anyway, there's no way to update them due to the way Microsoft has its own 
EULA
and to the way they work inside the IETeam.

Also, please remind me, Thomas, what is your position in this mailing list ?
Are you implementor ? What kind of w3c member are you ? If you don't have 
any
particular right in this WG, please stop to post such messages.

Someone that has no weight on the final decision can send its meaning to the
mailing list, but should never lock up the discussion as you do.

I've my own meaning too, I've sent some mails to say it (to Hakon Lie, for 
example)
but I didn't have repeated my meaning dozen of times like you do, because my
meaning is *just* informative. This is not worth repeating it 100 times. In 
particular
since you have introduced no new argument since at least two weeks.

Regards,
Fremy

Received on Thursday, 6 August 2009 08:13:30 UTC