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

Mikko Rantalainen wrote:
> Something to think about: if the compression is lossless and it can be
> legally implemented in free (as in open source) operating systems, I'd
> assume that font format to be used as native format in no time. That's
> because if it allows all the same features and requires less disk
> space,
> there's no reason not to use it all the time.
>
> However, if the compression cannot be used all the time because it
> cannot be legally implemented in the operating system, then it also
> cannot be used in free (again, as in open source) web browsers (e.g.
> Mozilla) either.
>
> You cannot have it both ways: either the same font file can be used
> both
> as a system font and web font or it cannot be used at all (in browser
> or
> in the system).

Nonsense. Unless by "the" system you mean only free OSes.

> That is, unless you decide that you're not interested
> in
> free software (operating systems or browsers) users. In that case, I
> wouldn't count on broad implementation.

Or perhaps the font makers aren't *worried* about free software OSes. They just want to be sure that the web fonts won't work natively in Mac OS or Windows. It would be *nice* if Linux developers respected the web fonts concept as well, and one might hope that the major distros would do so, but not a huge deal.

Remember, none of this is about hard-core DRM, just about percentages. Linux users are not exactly a major market for fonts today, so if it's possible for them to modify their distro to use web fonts natively (or even if it comes that way), that's not something most font vendors are going to lose a lot of sleep over.

Cheers,

T

Received on Thursday, 13 November 2008 15:35:04 UTC