RE: EPUB and fonts

Monotype is now a member of IDPF, and I was at the most recent EPUB meeting (Oct. 18-20 in SF) "selling WOFF" where the question of embedded fonts was brought up for discussion. 

The old EPUB spec does mention font obfuscation mechanism developed by Adobe a while back, but the support for embedded fonts was always optional (as in "may"). The question discussed was whether the group was comfortable to make support for embedded fonts mandatory in EPUB3 and, therefore, mandate support for a particular font format. The tentative decision was reached that supporting embedded fonts should be required, with font format being decided by polling all device vendors to see if a consensus can be reached. The two contenders for font format that were proposed for consideration were OpenType and WOFF, the preliminary indications showed that both formats are quite popular among device vendors and that either one of, or both of them can be adopted as mandatory data formats for EPUB.

The group members have agreed that WOFF metadata can be useful for EPUB and may offer valuable information for users; however, the data compression would offer little value since the EPUB content itself is packaged as a zip file.

Regards,
Vlad

P.S. Bill McCoy is no longer with Adobe, he started his own company called WebPaper.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-font-request@w3.org [mailto:www-font-request@w3.org] On
> Behalf Of Thomas Phinney
> Sent: Monday, November 01, 2010 11:01 PM
> To: Sylvain Galineau; Stephen Zilles; Christopher Slye
> Cc: www-font@w3.org
> Subject: 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 10:31:54 UTC