RE: FtF Meeting

Wednesday, March 03, 2010 11:40 AM <jackalmage@gmail.com>:

>If CWT is killed, that just means it'll still be a decade before I can
>ship a site without doubling all my @font-face rules and producing two
>versions of every font file.  This is not a win for us web developers,
>when there is such an easy path to solving this.

Tab, I don't think there's any winning or any way around a decade of decadent syntax.
I'm resigned to it. But wait, it might get worse before it gets better.
In IE 6, 7, and 8, EOT=TTF. The wrapper is tied to a particular font format.
WOFF too, is a wrapper, but it is not tied to a particular font format.
Yet, the one current implementation in FF, treats WOFF as if it *were* a format, with the format hint being ("woff") making no distinction as to the font format it contains.
Differences in rendering of different font formats on different platforms will perhaps be with us forever. So long as human taste remains a factor, pinpointing "the one best way" to render text onscreen is out of reach.
So, my WOFF file can contain a TTF, or a OTF CFF file, or some other format, but how do I go about differentiating the two so as to target the font format contained within it to a particular platform or user agent? Or are we to pretend that there is consistency of result and it doesn't matter?
So I still have to make a choice between font formats, WOFF or no WOFF.
And I still need to provide TTF/EOTs for IE6, 7, and 8, WOFF or no WOFF.
The way I see it, we're stuck with a mix of redundant rules and scripted solutions in any scenario. The work is to organize that mix, codify it, and simplify it - because we're going to be living with it for a good long while.
So what else is new on the World Wide Web?

Rich



-----Original Message-----
From: www-font-request@w3.org [mailto:www-font-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Tab Atkins Jr.
Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2010 11:40 AM
To: Håkon Wium Lie
Cc: Chris Lilley; www-font@w3.org
Subject: Re: FtF Meeting

On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 10:35 AM, Håkon Wium Lie <howcome@opera.com> wrote:
> Indeed. Thanks goes to W3C staff for finding consensus around WOFF. As
> a result, the web will be a better place; for browser vendors, web
> site developers, and font vendors it will be a more predictable place.

If CWT is killed, that just means it'll still be a decade before I can
ship a site without doubling all my @font-face rules and producing two
versions of every font file.  This is not a win for us web developers,
when there is such an easy path to solving this.

~TJ

Received on Wednesday, 3 March 2010 21:06:38 UTC