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

2008/11/12 Håkon Wium Lie <howcome@opera.com>:
> Also sprach Dave Crossland:
>
>  > >  > What we do know for a fact is that Adobe, Ascender, Bitstream, ITC,
>  > >  > Linotype, Microsoft and Monotype have said it would be an
>  > >  > acceptable solution, and there are many more smaller foundries and
>  > >  > individual type designers who support these efforts.
>  > >
>  > > I support your efforts in trying to find a compromise, one that all
>  > > listed vendors can support. Do you think they will support a scheme
>  > > that is not based on root strings?
>  >
>  > I suggest a scheme with root strings not based on ENFORCING them, but
>  > INFORMING people about them
>
> I'm not comfortable with this. If root strings are present, someone
> will demand -- possibly through the court system -- that they are
> enforced in UAs. And images, video will follow suit. It's better not
> to have root strings there in the first place.

Hmm. I've thought this over, and, I agree.

Someone _could_ attempt to demand UAs to turn DRE into DRM, possibly
via courts. The line between DRE and DRM is pretty thin...

And as Thomas Phinney has pointed out, DRE can introduce risky
uncertainty to actual lawyer-written licenses (its referred to as
EEULAA in that discussion).

But my basic suggestion is that the full lawyer-written texts of media
files, including fonts, be embedded in those files, and made viewable
to UA users in 1 click from the viewport.

This just involves UAs knowing how to read and display metadata for
all the common files on the web. Plenty already have such metadata
parts available. Adobe's XMP seems like a good candidate for file
formats without metadata parts already designed into them.

DRE isn't necessary, but I think I could live with it as a compromise,
and perhaps it could make the informing functionality a bit smarter.

Bert points out that it seems DRE (he refers to it as "policy
languages") are being developed by lots of people for all kinds of
media, though - http://www.w3.org/Submission/2008/02/ &
http://www.w3.org/Policy/pling/wiki/Main_Page - so perhaps its
inevitable...

Cheers,
Dave

Received on Wednesday, 12 November 2008 23:25:45 UTC