Re: [css3-fonts] Case insensitivity of <family-name>

Simon Sapin wrote:

> > The value of the 'font-family' property can contain (1) a font family
> > name intended to match a platform font family or (2) an author-defined
> > font family name used in @font-face rules or (3) a generic family.
> > This makes it somewhat like the predefined vs. user-defined counter
> > name case but with one important distinction - font family names can
> > be matched using a localized name (e.g. "ヒラギノ角ゴ ProN"), something
> > that is not user-defined.
> 
> (3) is covered by §3.1. "Pre-defined Keywords" of css3-values. (The 
> current draft says ASCII CI.)
> 
> (2) is matching font-family properties with font-family descriptors of 
> @font-face rules. Both are under the UA’s control, so it makes sense to 
> use the same rules as other user-defined identifiers. (Whatever these 
> rules end up being.)

I don't think using different rules for matching family names within
@font-face rules and platform font family names makes sense.  I think
platform font family names are an instance where Unicode caseless matching
is appropriate and I think the same matching should apply to
@font-face family names.

> (1) is, as you say, more subtle. I don’t know much about font
> subsystems. Are UAs expected to get a list of all fonts available on
> the system, all variants of their family names, and do the matching
> themselves?

Not quite sure what you're asking here, but the spec has specific
wording stating that user agents must match localized font family
names contained in font data. Whether a user agent can use platform
libraries to do this or not is really a platform issue.  In general,
the answer is they can on the majority of modern OS's, if that's what
you're asking.

Regards,

John Daggett

Received on Monday, 28 January 2013 11:29:31 UTC