Re: [css3-fonts] opentype font feature support

First of all, I'd like to agree with what Jonathan and Thomas have said.

Please keep in mind that OpenType has a worldwide adoption by far
greater than any other font format available today. It has the status of
an international standard (as Open Font Format, ISO/IEC 14496-22), and
has successful implementations made by pretty much every software
vendor. The web font formats that are under consideration today (WOFF,
EOT) are strictly based on OpenType. Closed-source text layout engines
that support OpenType Layout are developed by Adobe, Apple, Bitstream,
Microsoft and Monotype Imaging, open-source engines are available as
part of the ICU project (ICU Layout) and as part of the Pango project
(HarfBuzz). None of the alternatives has even a fraction of OpenType's
adoption, and as Thomas pointed out, it is very likely going to be
dominant for another 15+ years.

I don't think there are many reasons to remain 100% format-agnostic in
CSS. I think that the current CSS3 proposal is quite pragmatic,
combining a more generic approach for the most common features, and
allowing a somewhat more low-level access to the less common features or
their combinations. Also, this approach is quite future-proof, since it
will authors to make use of new features that may be registered in future.

A.

-- 

Adam Twardoch
| Language Typography Unicode Fonts OpenType
| twardoch.com | silesian.com | fontlab.net

Reporter: "So what will your trip to Ireland look like?"
Lech Wałęsa: "I get into a car, then onto a plane, and then the other
way around."

Received on Friday, 5 March 2010 04:20:00 UTC