FW: CSS3 @font-face / EOT Fonts - new compromise proposal

 Forwarding to the list 

-----Original Message-----
From: Levantovsky, Vladimir 
Sent: Monday, November 10, 2008 3:01 PM
To: 'Håkon Wium Lie'
Subject: RE: CSS3 @font-face / EOT Fonts - new compromise proposal

On Monday, November 10, 2008 12:11 PM Håkon Wium Lie wrote:
> 
> Compression is good -- my comment was about obfuscation and the need 
> for browsers to find common ways to support webfonts.
> 
> Wrt. compression, there are some questions:
> 
>  - do we need a font-specific compression scheme? As you have noted, a
>    font-specific scheme can provide better compression ratio. However,
>    JPEG 2000 can do better than JPEG, but we are still using JPEG on
>    the web.
> 

The way I see it is that in this particular case font-specific compression gives you the best of both worlds - you get the best compression and it would also satisfy font vendor concerns as font-specific obfuscation mechanism.

>  - what are the legal implications of implementing a new compression
>    scheme? 

Besides patent protection and W3C RF policy - none that I can think of (but I am not a lawyer).

>    I know that patent holders have said that they will accept
>    RF licensing at the point when this becomes a W3C Recommendation.
>    But W3C Recommendations are hard and time-consuming to make and
>    generally require implementations to come before them. It would
>    probably serve you case if you could offer RF licensing sooner
>    rather than later.

I presume that this is fairly standard situation in W3C, whenever a submission is made that has a IP clause according to W3C RF licensing policy. I will investigate.

> 
> Also, I think you derserve credit for coming up with a compromise 
> proposal that does not involve root strings.
> 

Thank you,
Vladimir

> -h&kon
>               Håkon Wium Lie                          CTO °þe®ª
> howcome@opera.com                  http://people.opera.com/howcome
> 
> 
>

Received on Monday, 10 November 2008 23:10:35 UTC