- From: Chris Lilley <chris@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 22:08:58 +0100
- To: Jerzy Karczmarczuk <karczma@info.unicaen.fr>
- CC: www-international@w3.org
Jerzy Karczmarczuk wrote: > > 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. The WebFont work says nothing about downloading fonrts being the *only* thing that is required to turn a "Latin" browser into one that can display Arabic. However, if one wants better control of the appearance of documents, including international documents, and one does not wish to make assumptions about what fonts are available, then downloading fonts is on e peice of the puzzle that needs to be solved. WebFonts, which became part of CSS2, solves that part. > There are several issues here. As far as the dynamic fonts > (Bitstream style, .pfr packing; IExplorer uses also different dfonts) > are > concerned, Tre the two implementations that i am aware of use different formats. That is not a problem because the CSS2 spec allows multiple URLs and allows aying what format each one points to. > A. the appropriate glyphs are accessible through LINK FONTDEF, LINK FONTDEF is a temporary solution because Netscape implemented support for style sheets and support for downloadable fonts in parallel, making it hard for one to use the other well. The @font-face construct is the correct one to use. > B. their coding corresponds to one of established codings; it may be > user-defined, or Unicode (or any other "faked"...) Faking will not work. Use one of the established encodings. Unicode UTF-8, for preference. > C. The document author prepares himself the layout: right align, every > line coded from right to left, etc. Horrible, but possible. Totally unnecessary and counter productive. Do not do this. Use the HTML dir attributes to indicate right to left text, and logical character order throughtout the document so it can reflow correctly on different window sizes. And use the direction and unicode-bidi properties in CSS2. For XML, your style sheets need to key off the xml:lang attribute (because XML has no dir attribute) or, of course, make up your own dir attribute. See: Font specification in CSS2, including WebFonts: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/fonts.html BiDi in CSS2 http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/visuren.html#x55 - Chris
Received on Thursday, 17 December 1998 16:06:41 UTC