- From: Chris Wilson <Chris.Wilson@microsoft.com>
- Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:20:35 +0000
- To: Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+w3c@gmail.com>
- CC: "www-style@w3.org" <www-style@w3.org>
I did not claim that there WAS consensus amongst browser vendors. In just as unscientific a manner, I would say that ranked by market share, your statement about browser vendors is false (as Microsoft has vehemently argued AGAINST TTF/OTF as that format). I asked, however, in order to establish from whom Ian was looking for consensus, and how he was ranking their feedback. I think there is non-unanimous consensus among font vendors that TTF/OTF linking is not a good enough solution. Seems like getting some measure of consensus on how to enable commercial fonts - that is, consensus that includes browser vendors AND font vendors - would be a good thing. -Chris -----Original Message----- From: simetrical@gmail.com [mailto:simetrical@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Aryeh Gregor Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 7:20 AM To: Chris Wilson Cc: www-style@w3.org Subject: Re: New work on fonts at W3C On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 7:47 PM, Chris Wilson<Chris.Wilson@microsoft.com> wrote: > On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote: >>On Tue, 16 Jun 2009, Levantovsky, Vladimir wrote: >>> The important point is that we seem to agree we need a universally >>> supported web font wrapper that would allow to put "signs and fences" to >>> reduce a risk of font piracy to a level that would be acceptable for >>> font foundries. >> >>FWIW, I don't think there is anything resembling consensus on this point. > > Consensus from whom, and how are we counting? I assume he means consensus from relevant parties, e.g.: web page authors, browser authors, font authors, W3C members. I don't think it's safe to say that all browser implementers, especially, currently agree that "we need a universally supported web font wrapper that would allow to put 'signs and fences' to reduce a risk of font piracy to a level that would be acceptable for font foundries". I previously quoted a post by David Baron, one of Mozilla's core developers, which suggested that OpenType/TrueType should be tried before introducing new font formats. John Daggett has posted in this thread suggesting the same, and he's apparently the one who wrote web font support for Firefox (at least, he's the assignee for bug 70132). Anne van Kesteren from Opera, again in this very thread, suggested pretty much the same thing, that maybe OpenType/TrueType is good enough and we should wait and see. Possibly more to the point, Mozilla, Apple, Google, and Opera are all including OpenType/TrueType support in current or soon-to-be-released versions of their browsers, and are not supporting other formats. This seems to indicate that they think OpenType/TrueType support would be of significant utility by itself, given the effort they had to invest to get it working. I think it's fair to conclude that there is not currently consensus among browser implementers that it's clear yet that a new font format is needed. Unscientifically, it seems to me that most browser implementers feel the opposite, in fact. So I'd say Ian's statement is fair. There does seem to be consensus among font foundry representatives that a new format is needed, and consensus among Microsoft representatives, from what I've seen.
Received on Thursday, 18 June 2009 17:21:18 UTC