Re: New work on fonts at W3C

On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 6:33 PM, Adam Twardoch<list.adam@twardoch.com> wrote:
> But believe me: there are MANY people out there who won't mind paying an
> upgrade for their corporate ID font licenses that will let them use the
> same fonts in print and on the web *IF THEY CAN*. I.e., if the browser
> makers implement a format that will allow commercial font foundries to
> "open up". That is, EOT.

The usual response given to this is that if OTF/TTF were the only
usable web font format, some commercial font foundries would license
its use for some of their fonts.  If there were enough demand compared
to existing font markets, foundries would have to bite the bullet and
make a large selection of fonts available due to competition, whether
they liked the format or not.  If this doesn't happen, it very likely
indicates a lack of demand for commercial-quality fonts, so there's no
big problem in that case either.

David Baron from Mozilla makes a fairly good case[1] that if we're
really concerned about users, we should at least give OTF/TTF-only a
try and see if it works.  If the arguments for EOT and so on are
correct, then there will be few to no high-quality commercial fonts
available after a couple of years, and introducing new font formats
could be considered then given the new evidence for the font
foundries' arguments.  If the arguments for OTF/TTF are correct, users
and authors will pretty much be happy with the fonts available, and
we'll have avoided introducing a DRM-encumbered (or DRMish at least)
format to the web, and everything will be great.

Again, I don't think further argument about this is likely to change
the mind of anyone important at this stage.  I find it incredibly
unlikely that arguments like this will convince Mozilla to adopt EOT
in particular.  Working toward the details of a compromise format
seems more productive. But I'm not affiliated with anyone who matters,
so I can't really help with that.

[1] http://dbaron.org/log/20090317-fonts

Received on Tuesday, 16 June 2009 23:06:02 UTC