Font Embedding

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In Microsoft Word (and, I presume, other word processing programs), it is 
possible to embed fonts in the document -- that is, to send the font with 
the text, so that it will render correctly on systems that don't have the 
correct font.

Might this be possible in HTML?  One couldn't make it exactly like Word, 
where the font becomes part of the document.  But if browsers sent fonts 
along as ancillary files -- as they do with graphics and applets -- it 
would work nicely.  The browser would first check to see if the specified 
font is available on the system, as it currently does with the FONT tag.  
If the file weren't available, the browser would download the specified 
font file from the server.  The font to be downloaded could be specified 
in an attribute to the FONT tag.  It might look something like:

<FONT SRC="facename.ttf" FACE="facename">

Of course, it would be necessary to standardize on one font format.  But 
this wouldn't add very much to tag bloat, and could be very useful.  Has 
the idea already been proposed as part of CSS?  If so, I apologize for 
throwing it out here.

Thanks a lot for listening.

 --Steve

Stephen R. Laniel                  |    "I was born not knowing and
Carnegie Mellon University         |     have only had a little time to
laniel+@andrew.cmu.edu             |     change that here and there."
www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/laniel     |               --Richard Feynman


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Received on Monday, 5 August 1996 20:10:24 UTC