Re: Next step?

Sylvain Galineau wrote:

> Limiting conformance to a single format that has yet to ship and will do nothing for a majority of users for years to come seems a distant second best choice to a solution as compatible with the present as it can reasonably be so I really don't understand the upside of the Highlander principle - 'there can be only one' - for today's web author. But then I am also trying to put the web author's interests first. They're the ones who will license and deploy fonts on their sites, after all. I'd rather give them all the options they need for web typography to flourish as soon as possible. 

And that market will determine what web font formats may ultimately be 
supported on the majority of browsers. But I fail to see either what 
that has to do with conformance or what it has to do with the likelihood 
of non-IE browsers adding support for CWT when they would already meet 
an any-2-of-4 conformance requirement by supporting WOFF in addition to 
what they are already doing.

What is the point of a conformance requirement? If it is only so that 
browser makers can say 'Look at me! I'm compliant!' then I don't really 
see the point. A conformance requirement should reflect a general desire 
of the interested parties to foster a particular technical solution, 
otherwise it is just bureaucracy qua bureaucracy: at best pointless and 
at worst putting additional burdens on people implementing standards, 
especially newcomers.

So it seems to me that the question to ask when considering possible 
conformance requirements is not 'What might people possibly agree to 
based on what they've already done?' -- which seems to be the case for 
any-2-of-4 -- but 'In what direction do we with to steer the ship on 
which we are all travelling?'

I'm still waiting for the reasoning that explains how any-2-of-4 acts 
like any kind of rudder.

John Hudson

Received on Thursday, 22 October 2009 03:05:09 UTC