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

On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 8:06 AM, Mikko Rantalainen
<mikko.rantalainen@peda.net> wrote:
> I'd assume that Microsoft would implement a raw TTF font support in
> their browser if it were supported by other major players (Mozilla,
> Opera, Apple) and free fonts were used on web sites.

Just like they speedily implement all the other web standards that
every other browser already supports, right?  Sure they'll do it if
lots of websites depend on it, but until they do it, no website *will*
depend on it.  Nobody who runs a website (except possibly one targeted
toward, say, Linux or Mac users only) is going to require the use of
any technology until that tech is supported by IE.  Microsoft can
refuse to implement anything it likes to.  For that matter, so can
Mozilla, possibly to a lesser extent.  Both have large enough market
shares that few web authors can afford to rely on features that aren't
supported in some fashion by both of those two, so neither sacrifices
much compatibility by refusing to implement a new feature.  All the
more so for a feature like font linking, which intrinsically supports
very graceful fallback: you just use the system default fonts instead
of the provided ones, and probably don't even realize you were
supposed to see something different.

So I'm thinking it would be very useful if a Microsoft rep would chip
in to clarify what kinds of compromises they'd be willing to accept,
just as we've had a few Mozilla people clearly outlining what kinds of
compromises are off-limits to them.  Would Microsoft even be willing
to implement raw font file linking in conjunction with support for an
obfuscated format, which the font foundry reps here appear to be okay
with?  Previous remarks by Alex Mogilevsky on this list suggest maybe
not: "Microsoft is against declarative linking to bare TTF files"
(from an October 20 post to the thread "CSS3 @font-face / EOT Fonts").

Received on Thursday, 13 November 2008 14:46:25 UTC