Re: CSS21 @font-face removal

 >As I said in another reply, I think designers think that text as GIF 
fulfils
 >their purpose and is more flexible,

As a graduate student in graphic design, please understand that I don't 
grasp all the nuances of why embedded fonts must be active with a user's 
system when SVG and SWF can embed font sets, but my point is more broad.

Most of the work I do with identity systems depends heavily on 
typographic consistency across all media, and often I start an identity 
system with the design of a specialized font for the client. It is 
nearly impossible, without font embedding tools from Microsoft and the 
TrueDoc, to keep this consistency in the medium that my clients would 
arguably get the most exposure - the Web. Even these tools do not create 
a universal solution. Therefore GIF text is, in fact, more flexible for 
the purpose of identity consistency, if not for efficient downloading. 
That said, I cannot possibly render long texts as a GIF because that 
would be completely ridiculous. Where does that leave designers?

I understand that designers like me consistently complain and cannot 
possibly offer any solutions in the realm of making this feature a 
possibility from a technical standpoint. Although this concern for 
typographic consistency and the ability to implement fonts of my 
creation, not just those available through purchase, is huge.

Will SVG work to solve this solution, or has the Web taken a huge step 
backward by deprecating @font-src:url? I can't tell if SVG is simply a 
graphics format with text that is editable from the page source, or if 
this is going to pick up where CSS is abandoning font embedding 
(remember, be nice to me despite my ignorance [Chris] I'm not a 
technologist, I'm a lowly designer). What can the design community do to 
help make this a reality? This is our MAIN concern for the Web right 
now, and every designer I know can't believe that this is still not 
possible.

Robert Boles
Kent State University
School of Visual Comunication Design

Received on Monday, 3 November 2003 10:04:11 UTC