Re: Webfonts in Opera 10

> Also, are there really any significant platforms that do not support
> the .otf flavor of OpenType in terms of plain glyph display?

We've run into a number of API-related problems on Windows.  The font
embedding API's on Windows don't support .otf fonts, that's why
Microsoft Office doesn't render embedded .otf fonts in Office documents.
When loaded dynamically using other API's .otf fonts don't appear to
work with Uniscribe, which effectively disables shaping of complex
scripts and support for rich typographic features.

I suspect that user agents in situations where code space is tight (e.g.
mobile/embedded), support for CFF fonts is an obvious feature to omit. I
can definitely imagine situations where only TTF fonts will be supported.  

> It is worth remembering that it's OpenType as a whole, and not just
> the TrueType flavor, that has become international standard ISO/IEC
> 14496-22. Of course, TrueType is 20 years old and OpenType is just 10
> years old -- but still, if there are still platforms out there that
> cannot provide basic rendering of both OpenType flavors, I consider it
> a temporary limitation that will be fixed anytime soon.

I think there are still significant differences in how the different
flavors of OpenType fonts are handled.  Support for shaping of complex
scripts varies widely across platforms.  I don't really see the ISO
flavor of OpenType as changing anything, OpenType is an evolving API
largely defined by Microsoft and Adobe. Hence the WWS name id's in
OpenType 1.5 and the still publically undefined math table formats used
in fonts like Cambria.  But hopefully the set of "standard" OpenType
features supported across all platforms will rise over the next couple
years.

Cheers,

John

Received on Friday, 5 December 2008 03:27:41 UTC