RE: Next step?

Roc, to be clear, yes, you have been perfectly consistent with yourself but you haven’t been the only voice around EOT and its rootstrings. I have personally heard strongly worded 180-degree opposite arguments on several occasions, over email and in person. My personal choice of the v1 header was in fact primarily aimed at bypassing those highly opinionated - and at times even shrill - debates.

I do not believe no one ever said CWT should be a requirement. I’m comfortable with CWT being one of the 4 formats on the charter, and with a UA conformance requirement to support 2 out of 4. Once you ship WOFF, you guys would thus conform. Your implementing CWT should, as far as I’m concerned, be your decision based on market demand from your own users. But if and when that were to happen, it would be best if there was a spec you could just implement without having to figure out whether it’ll work in IE and whatever else supports it. A Font WG seems the proper place to get that done.

From: rocallahan@gmail.com [mailto:rocallahan@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Robert O'Callahan
Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 1:43 PM
To: Sylvain Galineau
Cc: Tab Atkins Jr.; Chris Lilley; John Hudson; www-font@w3.org
Subject: Re: Next step?

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 9:26 AM, Sylvain Galineau <sylvaing@microsoft.com<mailto:sylvaing@microsoft.com>> wrote:
That they would have to do that is currently based on a set of assumptions around both licensing and the current definition of the CWT format, which is based on a rootstring-less header version.

Right. I argued on this very list that for this reason, it should be possible for EOT fonts containing a rootstring to also be valid CWT fonts (although the rootstring would be "padding data" as far as CWT is concerned), but to no effect (so far).
A WG would be the perfect place to discuss this. Given the passionate heat around rootstrings and the claim that they made ‘EOT-Full’ so unacceptable, I find it interesting that CWT is now deemed useless because it lacks them

I feel perfectly consistent in saying that rootstring processing is an unacceptable requirement, but that it would be expedient for fonts that IE already does rootstring processing on to be valid CWT fonts.
but as the format is not formally specified and we can do either while still being compatible with the IE installed base, I don’t think this is a conclusion that can be made at this point.

My conclusion is that CWT as it exists today should not be a requirement. Obviously if CWT changes in major ways that conclusion may become obsolete.

Rob
--
"He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." [Isaiah 53:5-6]