Re: [css-fonts-3] i18n-ISSUE-294: Fonts available on platforms

--On Friday, September 13, 2013 19:25 +0200 Chris Lilley
<chris@w3.org> wrote:

>> I think we need to be very careful about what we assume in
>> this area and what we say about what we assume.
> 
> Agreed in general. But what you seems to be saying, and what I
> am saying, is that making assumptions about locally installed
> fonts is a poor design decision (although web developers have
> been doing it for years - "Verdana is everywhere" etc.

Yes, exactly.   And even "some font that has glyphs for Lower
Slobbovian, or at least Cyrillic and Chinese, is available
everywhere".

> And bringing this back to the specification in question, what
> it is I believe trying to say in context is "Don't do that.
> Provide a downloadable font instead of making (invalid)
> assumptions about what is commonly available".

With the understanding that my thinking about these things is
sometimes distorted by sensitivity to both embedded,
resource-constrained environments and ones in which the "normal"
way to display characters involves a printf-like function that
makes it hard for the application to know exactly what
fonts/glyphs are actually available on the local platform,
"provide a downloadable font" may not be a useful solution
either because "can download and use it" may be a different type
of invalid assumption.  It is certainly better than invalid
assumptions about what is available, but I think the document
should exhibit more caution in either case.

> [quote]
>   This allows authors to select a font that closely matches
> the design   goals for a given page rather than limiting the
> font choice to a set   of fonts available on all platforms.
> [/quote]
> 
> maybe something like "believed to be available on most
> platforms" would make the point better.

Yes, I think that would be an improvement, even though it leaves
"believed by whom" and whether or not the belief is accurate
questions open.

    john

Received on Sunday, 15 September 2013 21:02:28 UTC