RE: RE: New work on fonts at W3C

Dave Crossland wrote:
>2009/6/23 Chris Wilson <Chris.Wilson@microsoft.com>:
>> Dave Crossland wrote:
>>>It becomes DRM when you say, "UAs are expected to honor those [restrictions]"
>>
>> If a web font says "I'm only licensed to be used on myorg.com", it's DRM if UAs don't render it on other domains too?
>
>Yes; please read the essays on noeot.com -
>http://noeot.com/shoulda-woulda-coulda.html specifically.

Umm, that doesn't make much sense.  MUST NOT vs Will Fail to Interoperate if you do seems like hairsplitting - or an attempt to ignore the spec altogether and render everything.  Not sure I see it.

>> My mom doesn't want to see the license for Comic Sans
>
>But when, for example, she clicks "File, Save as..." she might benefit
>from an info dialog box popping up to say "The files that make up this
>page are subject to copyright restrictions. Click here to learn more"
>which would open a browser window explaining what licenses go with
>which files.

Yeah, except you can't go back and place restrictions on File Save As dialogs either.

>> nor would she know what to do with it.
>
>Creative Commons and
>http://river-valley.tv/ingimp-a-smorgasbord-of-usability-adaptive-uis-and-visually-arresting-graphic-design-for-2009/

>show that licensing information can be made readable and meaningfully
>useful for people like your Mum.

I'm not saying she wouldn't know what to do with it if she was looking for a font to use; I'm saying showing that information to her is irrelevant.  Getting it to web developers is much more important; but unfortunately, there's no "web developer mode" in browsers (e.g. where the file save as dialog has license information pop up).

-Chris

Received on Tuesday, 23 June 2009 23:28:19 UTC