Re: [css3-fonts] @font-face matching and font-style descriptor

On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 5:56 PM, Thomas Phinney
<tphinney@cal.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 1:48 AM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> Basically, I'm not at all sympathetic to a typographer/font developer
>> saying "I don't want my font used at all if it's used in a way I can't
>> control the display of", which I believe is essentially the argument
>> of the no-simulation camp.  (Correct me if there is a more nuanced
>> position I should be aware of.)
>
> Um, yeah, there is. "I don't care whose fonts they are; as a designer, I
> don't want to see fake bolds and/or fake italics showing up by accident in
> my work." This is a pretty darn common position among serious graphic
> designers, which is why the behavior in Adobe applications is the way it is.
> (It happens to be a position I share, but that's not the point.)
> The fact that most web developers have not taken this position to date is
> not unrelated to the fact that web developers have not had real control of
> fonts. There are other factors, of course.

I find it strange that "show a different font that has this variant"
is acceptable/preferable to "simulate this variant in the font I
specified", but shrug.  It's definitely not a position that I hold,
and I've been using @font-face in my work for several years.

I'd strongly desire some way to say "please simulate variants I'm not
explicitly specifying"; I don't particularly care whether this is the
default or some extra option I have to specify in @font-face.

(This could possibly be related to the floated idea of a @font-family
rule for easy grouping of fonts....)

~TJ

Received on Tuesday, 14 September 2010 01:02:37 UTC