RE: Including WOFF in ACID3

Thursday, October 14, 2010 3:23 AM
<Vladimir.Levantovsky@MonotypImaging.com>:

Vladimir wrote:

>If the goal of ACID3 is to test @font-face functionality, then using TTF
data
>format (that is optional to be supported by the browsers) cannot be
considered
>a valid test - browsers may fail just because they do not support this
*optional*
>format even though they are fully compliant with the CSS spec.

Ian Hickson responded:

>>The goal of the test is to test TTF functionality as well.

Vlad,

I certainly support adding a test for WOFF support to Acid3.
However, if one of the goals of Acid3 is to test TTF functionality as well,
then at least the test should be accurate and fair to all implementers.

As Sylvain Galineau wrote on my blog just some minutes ago:
"as long as it's out there [the Acid3 test] it should reflect common
practices and standards."

Exactly. I agree fully.

So, since IE9 identifies a font as either "commercial" or "free" based on
how the embedding bits are set - loading those that are "Installable" and
discarding those that are not - it seems to me that the problem clearly lies
with the Ahem font.
Ahem, as it is, is simply not representative of both kinds of fonts!


I therefore offer the following modest proposal:

Acid3 should be amended to also use a second Ahem font, with the embedding
bits set to something other than "Installable" (zero) and - based on the IE
team's recommendations since they've looked into this extensively - Acid3
should alternate between the two fonts. I'm sure Mr. Hickson would have no
trouble setting this up.

Say a 50/50 split? 60/40? Other? Sylvain, what's the spread?

This way, sometimes the font would load in IE9 and sometimes it wouldn't.
And the user would be left guessing at the reasons why.

This would seem to be the most accurate and fair way to test TTF support,
would it not?

Regards,

Rich


-----Original Message-----
From: www-font-request@w3.org [mailto:www-font-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of
Levantovsky, Vladimir
Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2010 3:23 AM
To: Håkon Wium Lie; Sylvain Galineau
Cc: www-font@w3.org
Subject: RE: Including WOFF in ACID3

On Wednesday, October 13, 2010 2:00 PM Håkon Wium Lie wrote:
> Sylvain Galineau wrote:
>  >
>  > ...the test rule would be:
>  >
>  > 	@font-face { font-family: "AcidAhemTest"; src: url(font.woff),
> url(font.ttf); }
> 
> I don't support this change. I think there's a value to keeping things
> stable. Errors should be corrected, but -- in general, unless there
> are obvious reasons -- I don't think features should be added or
> removed.

I don't see how implementing what Sylvain has proposed would affect the
features of the test. If the goal of ACID3 is to test @font-face
functionality, then using TTF data format (that is optional to be supported
by the browsers) cannot be considered a valid test - browsers may fail just
because they do not support this *optional* format even though they are
fully compliant with the CSS spec.

Given that at the time when the ACID tests were written there have been no
interoperable font format mandated by any W3C spec, the test itself is
faulty - failure to support an optional font format doesn't mean failed
support for @font-face. 

What Sylvain is proposing is in fact correcting an error in the test itself
- by adding reference to a font resource in a format that is soon to become
the official interoperability standard the test would be able to fulfill its
purpose for all compliant browsers.

> 
> Aslo, by making the proposed change, it becomes possible to pass Acid3
> without supporting ttf.

And why this is an issue? TTF is an optional format that has never been
mandated to be supported by browsers.

> We could end up in a situation where browser x
> support ttf only and browser y support woff only, but both of them
> pass Acid3. As a result, interoperability would suffer.

Good point! The only way to solve this issue is to remove the optional TTF
resource and use interoperable and standardized WOFF format. This will
insure that all browsers that pass the test are compliant with officially
standardized solution, any support for optional features would be an icing
on the cake.


Regards,
Vladimir

> 
> I'm happy to add WOFF to a future Acid test, though.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> -h&kon
>               Håkon Wium Lie                          CTO °þe®ª
> howcome@opera.com                  http://people.opera.com/howcome

Received on Thursday, 14 October 2010 19:54:08 UTC