Re: SVG Fonts [...]

2010/6/3 Dr. Olaf Hoffmann <Dr.O.Hoffmann@gmx.de>

> 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.
>

In general SVG fonts are going to be lower quality, in terms of
rasterization.

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.
>

It would be easy to create a very simple tool to convert SVG glyph outlines
into an Opentype font --- and back again, for the simple cases that can be
represented with SVG.

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.
>

Opentype is not a cryptic or obscure format. It is the font format used by
almost all font designers. There are very many free and non-free tools that
work with Opentype. Probably more people work with Opentype daily than SVG.

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?
>

It would be a mammoth task to extend the SVG Fonts spec to handle all the
features of Opentype, especially shaping for all the world's complex
scripts. Then of course SVG implementors would have to add shaping engines
for those scripts. (We already have the shaping engines implemented for
Opentype.) This is never going to happen. For this reason alone, SVG Fonts
are a dead end as a general-purpose font format.

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.
>

That would require us to limit SVG fonts to just what is possible in
Opentype, so then we're talking about yet another kind of SVG Fonts:
a) SVG 1.2 Tiny Fonts
b) SVG 1.1 Full Fonts
c) SVG ... Opentype-Compatible Fonts

(I'm not sure if (c) and (a) are the same or not; it sounded like "overlaps"
are possible in (a) but not (c)?)

Rob
-- 
"He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are
healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his
own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." [Isaiah
53:5-6]