Re: [css3-fonts] mutiple formats in src descriptor

Daniel Glazman wrote:

> Sorry, but in the case of the src font descriptor [1], I don't
> understand exactly the use case for a format() hint containing more
> than one format string. For instance:
> 
>    src: url(foo) format("woff", "opentype");
> 
> Is it to handle the case where a single URL can reference multiple
> font objects of different formats? In that case, what's the mechanism
> used for the format selection between user agent and server? Content
> negociation based on the format string?

There are font formats that overlap (e.g. various subflavors of
TrueType) but user agents will typically support both format hints, so
I'm not sure there's a real need for this.  The format hint is there
to tell a user agent when *not* to download a font, not to identify
the data format in any great detail.

The original working in the old CSS2 spec [1] gives an example:

> src: url("http://cgi-bin/bar?stuff") format("opentype", "intellifont")
>     a full URI, in this case to a script, which can generate two
>     different formats - OpenType and Intellifont 

I'm not quite sure how this was supposed to work (based on what
information does the server generate one format or the other?). 
Looking at this now, seems like a good candidate to be trimmed out.

I do love deleting...

Cheers,

John Daggett

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-CSS2-19980512/fonts.html#referencing

Received on Thursday, 26 May 2011 06:27:19 UTC