RE: New work on fonts at W3C

On Thursday, June 25, 2009 10:34 AM Aryeh Gregor wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 7:27 PM, Robert
> O'Callahan<robert@ocallahan.org> wrote:
> > 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?
> 
> Hmm.  That's a good point.  I can't think how to avoid that at the
> moment.  There might be some way . . .
> 
> Still, any non-EOT solution means that web authors have to provide two
> different font formats for (I'd guess) at least five to ten years,
> until IE8 and earlier are negligible.  And that's even if IE9 supports
> the new format.  It would be great if as many authors as possible
> didn't have to provide a second format, given they already have to
> provide EOT no matter what.
> 
> On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 12:03 AM, Levantovsky,
> Vladimir<Vladimir.Levantovsky@monotypeimaging.com> wrote:
> > This would be very desirable. I would support an EOT subset that
> eliminates root string in favor of same-origin restriction
> 
> Robert brings up a good point, though: IE doesn't support same-origin
> restrictions for EOT, so font foundries most likely wouldn't allow EOT
> to be used without RootStrings.  Can you think of any way around that?
> 

Like I said, I believe font foundries would be open to constructive discussion, and I would trust the experts would be able to come up with the solution that can resolve the issue in mutually-agreeable fashion.

> > and I don't think that XOR obfuscation is really necessary if MTX
> decompression is universally supported by all browsers.
> 
> Well, surely neither of those is really necessary.  Even a plain EOT
> with no XOR and no MTX can't be used on desktops without running it
> through a tool, so that should be enough obfuscation, right?
> 

Yes, although I believe many people agreed that having fonts compressed is always a benefit to users, especially if the compression is free. And, there is sufficient base of authors who already use compressed EOT fonts - supporting MTX would allow other browsers compete with IE in those markets.

> On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 6:54 AM, Mikko
> Rantalainen<mikko.rantalainen@peda.net> wrote:
> > It's important to notice that currently EOT has edge over other
> choices
> > only because its already supported by Microsoft Internet Explorer(*).
> > You cannot make up any new extension (standard or not) because it
> would
> > not be supported by currently available Microsoft Internet Explorer.
> 
> You could, it would just have to be reverse-compatible.  Same as with
> any standard, like all of CSS and HTML.

Received on Thursday, 25 June 2009 17:48:24 UTC