Re: Comments on CSS3 Fonts module

On Sun, 15 Sep 2002, Henri Sivonen wrote:
> 
> It would likely be bad for the performance of the (hopefully upcoming)  
> fixes for ATSUI-related Mozilla bugs (such as 121540 and 165878) if
> Mozilla wouldn't be allowed to just pass a list of fonts in the
> preferred fallback order (based on author CSS and user prefs) to ATSUI
> and had to implement different fallback rules on the application side.

I want UAs to try all fonts on the system for each glyph, not just the
specified ones. Also, the specified fonts have to be selected based on the
rules in CSS1 (which decide which fonts 'match', e.g. bitmapped fonts and
sizes, italic, etc), and which font is appropriate for each glyph has to
be based on the unicode-range descriptor as well as other factors.

So tough, you can't just let the OS do it. You can use the OS for some
aspects, but not all.


> So far, Mozilla's attempts to avoid ATSUI and to implement everything 
> on the application side have lead to worse text rendering results than 
> OmniWeb's approach to go with the OS services.

No offence to the Omniweb people, but it's hardly an example of great CSS
compliance. Sure, if you ignore the spec, you can make your implementation
blazingly fast. Just skip any graphics support and dump the markup to the
screen. And no offence to the Mozilla people, but it's hardly an example
of optimal engineering either. So neither of these UAs are good examples.

-- 
Ian Hickson                                      )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
"meow"                                          /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
http://index.hixie.ch/                         `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Sunday, 15 September 2002 10:49:29 UTC