RE: New work on fonts at W3C

 

 

From: rocallahan@gmail.com [mailto:rocallahan@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Robert O'Callahan
Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2009 7:27 PM
To: Aryeh Gregor
Cc: Levantovsky, Vladimir; Brad Kemper; Jonathan Kew; www-style@w3.org
Subject: Re: New work on fonts at W3C

 

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 11:06 AM, Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+w3c@gmail.com <mailto:Simetrical%2Bw3c@gmail.com> > wrote:

 On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 6:27 PM, Robert O'Callahan<robert@ocallahan.org> wrote:
 > This means fragmenting the EOT format into EOT-without-rootstrings,
 > EOT-without-compression, EOT-full, etc. In particular, if some browsers only
 > support EOT-without-rootstrings but font vendors require their fonts to have
 > rootstrings, nothing much has been gained except confusion (and perhaps an
 > opportunity has been lost).

 Why would font foundries be okay with Ascender's proposal, but not EOT
 minus RootString plus CORS?


I'm not making any claims about the preferences of font vendors.

 I don't think that browsers implementing different subsets would be at
 all confusing.  Web authors have long been used to facts like "you can
 use PNG but not with alpha channels, because IE6 doesn't support them"
 or "you can use CSS rule X but not Y, because browser Z doesn't
 support it".  It's not a big deal IMO as a web developer.  What you do
 is just forget about everything you can't use.


In CSS you can generally get graceful degredation; whatever parts of CSS are understood by the browser will be used. Even so, it's a pain. It's definitely confusing, it's just something that Web developers have learned to live with. We try to reduce that burden, not add to it.

Anyway, your proposed EOT fragmentation is not comparable in practice. Since IE doesn't impose same-origin restrictions on EOT fonts, font vendors would probably insist on root strings in their fonts, so what's the point of supporting EOT-without-rootstrings?

 

 

There are other ways to block font linking from other sites that do not require root strings or CORS (http://openfontlibrary.org/wiki/Blocking_drive-by_access). 

Web authors would have different tools in their possession, and I don’t think that font vendors would insist on having it implemented one particular way vs. another.

 

Regards,

Vlad

 


Rob
-- 
"He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." [Isaiah 53:5-6]