RE: EOT & DMCA concerns

Wednesday, August 05, 2009 Jonathan Kew <jonathan@jfkew.plus.com>:

>If everyone implements EOTL now, then authors will naturally deploy  
>EOTL fonts, because they'll work everywhere. That means that even if  
>some of us implement another "better" format as well, authors are  
>unlikely to bother deploying it because it won't work in legacy IE (or  
>even current IE for a couple of years, perhaps). So the new format  
>will not get any significant level of testing in the marketplace; and  
>because EOTL will be the "universal" format in actual use on the web,  
>there'll be little incentive for slower-moving vendors to bother  
>supporting the new format at all.

>On the other hand, if we define a web font format that provides  
>tangible benefits (such as compression to reduce bandwidth  
>requirements, and improved metadata support that many vendors would  
>like), and do *not* rush to implement EOTL, there's a strong incentive  
>for all parties to work towards support of the new format. Meanwhile,  
>authors who wish to support web fonts on legacy IE browsers will need  
>to deploy two formats for some time -- how long depends on Microsoft's  
>business decisions, and on how slowly users upgrade, and on how  
>concerned authors are about getting their chosen fonts to display in  
>obsolete browsers. Is that such an unreasonable scenario?

Firstly, since - as many have pointed out - EOTL and .webfonts/ZOT are not
mutually exclusive, what would be wrong with implementing EOTL along with
.ZOT or .webfont simultaneously as is being done with the test builds JD has
taken the initiative to provide?
I'm surprised you are not suggesting this. It would appear to be a happy
medium which puts the choice of format firmly in the hands of web authors
with no value judgments as to which "tangible benefits" make the most sense
imposed from on high. May the best format win, in both the short term and
the long.
I would also like to point out that one of the "tangible benefits" you cite
- compression - is available freely for EOTL as per Monotype's pledge but
was ultimately dismissed outright. The reason given was that it introduced
an extra level of complexity requiring additional testing. Well, now we seem
to moved into a period of testing, so why isn't MTX being tested as well.
.ZOT has compression doesn't it? So that's being tested, I presume.
JD? Vlad? Since testing is the order of the day (and I'm all for it and
participating), why isn't MTX a part of the mix?

Lastly, what might make your suggestion a very unreasonable scenario for web
authors (and font producers, as well) are the problems involved with
generating multiple file formats and the browser sniffing involved. I guess
all is involved will come out in this testing phase.
BTW - regarding your statement:
>So the new format  
>will not get any significant level of testing in the marketplace; and  
>because EOTL will be the "universal" format in actual use on the web,  
>there'll be little incentive for slower-moving vendors to bother  
>supporting the new format at all.

Can you cite any analogous situations from the past to support this or are
you just presenting it as a common-sense prima fascia argument?

Regards,

rich

Received on Thursday, 6 August 2009 17:36:46 UTC