Re: [css3-fonts] font descriptor default values

If the font file itself contains information about optical sizes to  
use, such as with multiple-master fonts, then ideally the UA would use  
the right optical size based on the used font-size, right?



On Mar 4, 2009, at 12:45 PM, John Daggett <jdaggett@mozilla.com> wrote:
>>>> Or the lack of font properties to sufficiently delineate full font
>>>> families?
>>>
>>> That's also a problem. The notion of properties only goes so far: in
>>> the real world, some members of font families are distinguished by
>>> arbitrary design variations that don't necessarily match the simple
>>> weight/width/slope model. Optical size is the obvious and most
>>> common one, and could be done as a property, but there are plenty of
>>> simply arbitrary differences that are not amenable to a "property"
>>> approach, and are best dealt with as an additional string.
>>
>> That being said, weight/width/slope handles maybe 95% of the fonts  
>> out
>> there, and is a great advance over just bold and italic.
>
> Optical size as a separate axis of variation is interesting.  I know
> Adobe ships with font families that include optical size variations  
> but
> is this commonly used by other font vendors?
>
>>> It would be helpful to hear solutions you think might solve this
>>> "fundamentally broken" model.
>>
>> Two things need to be done:
>>
>> - clearly define what version of "family" name should be used
>>
>> - define appropriate means to disambiguate fonts which are not
>> distinguished by weight/width/slope alone. Perhaps add a property for
>> optical size, and the ability to specify an arbitrary string for part
>> of the name.
>
> Interesting, so the arbitrary string would map to what exactly?   
> You're
> thinking of something WPF-ish where you try and match this against  
> some
> part of the style name?  Style name localizations are a big headache
> here.  If only there were named variation axes... ;)
>
> Regards,
>
> John
>

Received on Thursday, 5 March 2009 00:12:36 UTC