RE: [OpenType] SVG Fonts inside of OpenType fonts? [Cross-post from www-font@w3.org]

On Wednesday, June 29, 2011 9:18 AM Karsten Luecke wrote:
> 
> I agree with Thomas's earliest comment that there should be only one
> kind of outline description per font. Colored and/or animated emoji
> characters or colored/animated drop-caps or titling glyph variants do
> not need to be included, as additions, in a normal font. They can be
> served in additional fonts.
>  From a markup point of view, it does not make a difference whether you
> choose one or another GSUB feature, choose one or another outline
> description table, or choose another font (family/style/weight/etc). So
> that markup could just refer to another font.

Apologies for a delayed response.

I agree that colored and animated glyphs do not _need_ to be included, but the capability to do this can certainly be useful and desirable. The use of emoticons these days is nothing unusual, and many email and IM clients treat them differently, either as simple sequence of characters, or a ligature, or a special-case symbol that is substituted "on the fly" when a message is delivered (as e.g. chat in Skype), or application-specific item (e.g. picture that is inserted into a text by some web-based IM clients).

It is certainly easier for a user to simply have these options (regular and/or colored/animated glyphs) be available in the same font so that when I type a "smiley" :) - it can either be substituted by a regular glyph that displays a ligature, or could be substituted by the animated smiley (as Skype does) - based on the capabilities of a client and font engine, and with no additional efforts on user side. Requiring a user to switch to a different font just to insert emoticons in a message would be cumbersome, and doesn’t seem to be necessary.

Thank you,
Vladimir

Received on Thursday, 7 July 2011 17:33:08 UTC