Local Font Access (was: [minutes] Internationalization telecon 2025-04-17)

On 2025-04-17 23:04, Fuqiao Xue minuted:
>     r12a: First remark should be that they haven't read the Safari
>     discussion.
>     … And they don't seem to acknowledge the issues that
>     system-font-only creates and they don't talk about the proposed
>     solutions, such as opt-in and local document use.

They do talk about proposed solutions:

 > Allow users to grant access to all locally-installed fonts to 
specific origins using the Local Font Access API
<https://developer.chrome.com/docs/capabilities/web-apis/local-fonts>> 
https://github.com/explainers-by-googlers/limiting-local-fonts-access?tab=readme-ov-file

 From the explainer for Local Font Access API:

 > 
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/capabilities/web-apis/local-fonts#why_do_we_need_the_local_font_access_api_when_there_are_web_fonts

However, the access granted by that API is very broad and detailed, and 
is a fine-grained fingerprinting vector as it

- exposes specific font internals such as version numbers.
- exposes a complete list of all installed fonts

The TAG design review(s) were closed for lack of response to TAG comments
https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/399
https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/400

See in particular:

https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/400#issuecomment-1215333348

https://developer.chrome.com/docs/capabilities/web-apis/local-fonts#why_do_we_need_the_local_font_access_api_when_there_are_web_fonts

https://developer.chrome.com/docs/capabilities/web-apis/local-fonts#why_do_we_need_the_local_font_access_api_when_there_are_web_fonts

https://developer.chrome.com/docs/capabilities/web-apis/local-fonts#why_do_we_need_the_local_font_access_api_when_there_are_web_fonts

-- 
Chris Lilley
@svgeesus@mastodon.scot
Technical Director @ W3C
W3C Technical Programming Team, Core Web Design