Re: SVG Fonts [...]

I think, the main advantage of SVG fonts is,
that if an author needs 20 exactly defined glyphs
for an SVG document, he can create them
with the same tools as the other content of the document
without the need to care about other formats or software.

This is a very big advantage.
It is an option to get high quality and predictable results,
if this matters, with low efforts.

Of course, if there is no such option or viewers to not interprete
this option, many authors will just use a feature from programs
like inkscape to convert text into inaccessible paths, difficult to edit
afterwards and not readable anymore without the graphical 
representation.
As usual taking the line of least resistance instead of
learning a complete new format to get the same effect 
with much more efforts.

If we compare it for example with the color-profile,
at least I decided to defer understanding this feature
for at least some more years after a short look on the
specification of the profile format - leaving me with the
open question, how to do it with a text editor or how
to get some tool to identify what is in such a profile and
how to create a new one.
Indeed, I think, color-profile is not used very often -
don't know if it is often implemented in typical SVG
viewers.
This can be the future as well for yet another cryptic
font-format instead of the option to define glyphs simply with
SVG for SVG documents.

Yet another format instead of a simple SVG mechanism
to define glyphs can frustate authors a lot, not really wanting
to learn a complete new format, maybe including the efforts to 
look for new (free?) software just to define the appearance 
of 20 glyphs...

If something is missing in the current SVG font definitions, why not
to add it in an SVG 2.0 module for those, who want to use this 
for example on low resolution devices?
As already done with the compatibility between SVG and CSS2.0,
properties could be aligned as well with other popular font-formats to
get some better compatibility or to provide an option for programs
to transform the SVG font to another font format before using it,
if this is simpler to implement.

Olaf

Received on Wednesday, 2 June 2010 13:59:57 UTC