Re: Explicit WOFF metadata format declaration?

On Thursday, November 18, 2010, 4:36:48 PM, Laurence wrote:

LP> Is there any merit in the idea of a 'format' attribute in the root <metadata> element?

LP> I ask because it seems likely that WOFF XML metadata will find
LP> itself sometimes separated from the WOFF files for which it is
LP> intended. For example, XML may be exported from an editor before
LP> being imported into a WOFF font via sfnt2woff; or font vendors may
LP> use an XML template file, which has some of its contents replaced
LP> programmatically before being embedded into a WOFF. In such cases
LP> it  seems beneficial to identify the XML, unambiguously, as WOFF
LP> metadata. The generic <metadata> tag is insufficient for this.

Fair point, and I would not be opposed to adding @format to the metadata element.

LP> If this proposal is attractive, I propose the standard value
LP> "font/woff" for the format attribute. It would be a MAY not a MUST in the spec, of course.

Please see discussions on media type at the Lyon f2f meeting. In the end we decided to go with application/font-woff because past experience showed that attempting to registera font top level type would encounter significant resistance at IANA.



-- 
 Chris Lilley   Technical Director, Interaction Domain                 
 W3C Graphics Activity Lead, Fonts Activity Lead
 Co-Chair, W3C Hypertext CG
 Member, CSS, WebFonts, SVG Working Groups

Received on Thursday, 18 November 2010 16:52:56 UTC