Re: Downloadable fonts and image replacement

Håkon Wium Lie wrote:

> I don't agree with that. Consider this design from the zen garden:
> 
>   http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=176/176.css
> 
> The page is beautiful, funny, and it mixes images and text. And, it's
> pretty accessible. 

But the images, not being "real" images (in the sense that they're
not from the era that they pretend to be), need not have the text
embedded in them as is currently the case.  If CSS were able to flow
text around irregular images (a la Quark), and if downloadable/
embedded fonts were supported, then the images could be simplified
to the 'real' graphical elements therein and the text superimposed
(assuming a sufficiently powerful CSS,  which we don't yet have).

So although that page is indeed a counter-example to my earlier
assertion (that "text is text, and images are images, and the latter
should never be used as a substitute for the former"), that is only
true for the current state of the art.  In an ideal world, all the
textual elements could be factored out and layered on in the
browser.

Whether this would be /sensible/ is another matter :-)

** Phil.

Received on Tuesday, 25 April 2006 20:28:50 UTC