Re: EPUB and fonts

The font mangling spec in question was originally developed by folks
at Adobe, and they were the ones most concerned about sticking raw
fonts in a ZIP archive as being just a bit too exposed to be
considered "embedded fonts" (as described in the linked spec for font
mangling). Adobe's Bill McCoy is secretary of the EPUB 2.1 working
group. So if one wants to sell EPUB on WOFF, which IMO would be quite
reasonable for EPUB to adopt, Christopher Slye and Steve Zilles might
be useful "standard" bearers (pun intended).

Cheers,

T

On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 4:18 PM, Laurence Penney <lorp@lorp.org> wrote:
> Thanks for this pointer, Sylvain. For a while I've thought it odd that the eBooks people don't seem to talk to web people so this is good news.
>
> Chris, perhaps could you remind us how much interest or influence W3C has, officially and unofficially, in the eBook world.
>
> On a slightly related note, I wonder if W3C has a collective opinion on how webfonts should be handled in the "save as complete webpage" feature of modern browsers. (Well, it's one way to make an eBook.) In my tests, Firefox, Safari and Chrome (latest Mac stable releases) are all fine with data URI fonts. Firefox and Chrome fail on linked font files, but Safari actually stores a remote webfont as a font/ttf MIME resource inside the .webarchive.
>
> - L
>
> On 1 Nov 2010, at 14:07, Sylvain Galineau wrote:
>
>> We had a chat with the EPUB liaison during the CSSWG meeting at TPAC today.
>>
>> The following link describes the documents being worked on by EPUB currently : http://www.idpf.org/specs.htm.
>>
>> Of particular interest is the 'Font Mangling Specification' at http://www.idpf.org/doc_library/informationaldocs/FontManglingSpec_2.0.1_draft.htm.
>>
>> This is merely a font obfuscation mechanism for the purpose of embedding fonts in the EPUB package (a zip file):
>>
>> "The proposed mechanism will simply provide a stumbling block for those who are unaware of the license details of
>> the supplied font. It will not prevent a determined user from gaining full access to the font. Given the original
>> OCF publication, it is possible to apply the algorithms described in this document to extract the raw font file.
>> Whether this satisfies the requirements of individual font licenses remains a question for the licensor and licensee."
>>
>> Given that EPUB and Web Fonts WG reps are present at TPAC this week, I think it'd be ideal for this WG to discuss
>> the issue and start engaging our peers at EPUB on the matter.
>>
>>
>
>
>



-- 
How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four.
Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
—Abraham Lincoln

Received on Tuesday, 2 November 2010 03:01:21 UTC