Re: WebFont?

Erik van der Poel answers to the posting of -

> Hachim Haddouti :
> >
> > I read an article about WebFont
> > which will support displaying "foreign" (such as Japanese, Arabic,
> > etc.) web sites in our "Latin" browsers by loading required fonts from
> > the font server. My questions are:
> >
> > 1. What are the state of this work?
> > 2. Which fonts are supported? e.g. Arabic?
> > 3. I think that even if one can load fonts from server, do all OS
> >   support them? What I want to say is, it is possible that the required
> >  font has been loaded, but the OS can not display them.
 
> Take a look at "Dynamic Fonts" in:
> 
> http://home.netscape.com/eng/intl/basics.html#setup
> 
> However, Netscape does not support Arabic (yet).
> 
> Erik


There are several issues here. As far as the dynamic fonts 
(Bitstream style, .pfr packing; IExplorer uses also different dfonts)
are
concerned, there is nothing in Netscape to support or not to support
an Arabic *font*, provided that:
A. the appropriate glyphs are accessible through LINK FONTDEF, and the
   document defines its name correctly.
B. their coding corresponds to one of established codings; it may be
   user-defined, or Unicode (or any other "faked"...)
C. The document author prepares himself the layout: right align, every
   line coded from right to left, etc. Horrible, but possible. (In
   fact, I don't really know - if Netscape declares in the "preferences"
   the possibility to accept Unicode, it should provide for some
   control characters as well; I tried this once and it didn't work...)

So, the fact that Netscape, and other browsers do not accept Arabic is
not just the font problem. But for the operating system this should
be absolutely transparent, the same pfrs work under Windows and Solaris.
The font server should - apparently - declare their MIME type correctly,
though.

===

The offer of BitStream is very limited; they sell over 1300 fonts
of the standard type, but the dynamic trueDoc 

http://www.truedoc.com/webpages/intro/

seems to be in statu nascendi. TrueDocTors mention only HexMac Typograph 
and Extensis BeyondPress (for Windows??) as the available font authoring
tools.

The actual situation is deceiving. The rendering is slow, Netscape
blinks and redraws the page a few times, etc. 

Wesolych Swiat Bozego Narodzenia.

Jerzy Karczmarczuk
Caen, Normandy, France.

Received on Wednesday, 16 December 1998 02:25:08 UTC