Re: WOFF and extended metadata

The value of standard accessible metadata for the woff ecosystem is obvious, and I am surprised that I have to make a point about it (instead of [more knowledgeble] representants of foundries with large catalogs on stake, and FOSS font activists who have always been so energic about licensing data and promoting typographic culture). Anyway...

As tool makers you all know that you have to offer support for the tools you produce (be it free or commercial), and you know how valuable it is to have information about your tools easily acessible for regular users and support people. 'What is your environment, what version [of the tool] are you using?' are the first questions to ask when troubleshooting. Operating systems and applications offer an 'about' option for exactly this purpose. Font makers have the same need, and you all seem to be neglecting that.

[The question of how many users actually access this data is irrelevant -- this is not a quantitative issue, it's about the quality of the experience of users with special needs.]

Then there is all this information which is essential to promote a healthy webfont culture (free or commercial) -- type-designer credit, license details, and all sorts of additional information to educate designers/users about fonts. If you want a good example of the value of a standardized meta-information infra-structure in promoting typographic culture, just visit the FontStruct website (the largest open font community and largest open font library on the web). This issue is not about 'font vendors', it's about creative individuals trying to use the web to promote their work, and using the power of the web to connect font makers and font users.

Acessible metadata is part of the promised woff-experience -- a space for communication between font makers, font distributors, web authors, web readers. (The other part is the 'non-desktop-format' promise, which is fragile and not really a positive feature for users of fonts.)

I don't understand why other formats and the current sub-optimal webfont experience should limit the future of woff. The other formats are not web standards, and once woff is standardized and implemented in all browsers there is little reason for font makers to license webfonts in eot/svg/ttf/otf formats. I fail to see a reasonable argument for the lowest-common-denominator approch that is being suggested here.

Making access to metadata optional would send the wrong message to font makers and undermine the whole purpose of woff. ("Why bother putting information into the fonts if users can't look at it?") Without access to metadata woff becomes just another format to generate and support, with no perceived benefit. 

Suggesting that it is up to 'font vendors' to build add-ons to access metadata is absurd. Font makers are mostly individuals such as myself or small teams, not companies like Mozilla or Google or Microsoft. Really, it's your job to build tools to read and display woff data, not ours. Our job is to make good webfonts, and that's already difficult enough thanks to OS and browser makers failing to provide even the most basic standards for font rendering.

There will be no more noise on this matter from me, I'll get back to my work and let you do yours. I have confidence that the members of the WG will do the right thing and find a sensible solution for this issue, for the benefit of all users of the world wide web.

Received on Thursday, 27 May 2010 14:42:21 UTC