Re: Fwd: SVG Fonts [...]

Rick wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Rick <graham.rick@gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 2:27 PM
> Subject: Re: SVG Fonts [...]
> To: Patrick Dengler <patd@microsoft.com>
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 9:59 AM, Patrick Dengler <patd@microsoft.com> wrote:
>> <use> is a very powerful and nice feature and allows me "use" an svgdocument just like a font for the vast majority of use cases.
>>
>> <use .. xlink:href="svg.font#f">
>> <use .. xlink:href="svg.font#o">
>> <use .. xlink:href="svg.font#n">
>> <use .. xlink:href="svg.font#t">
> 
> Except that you lose the text semantics.  Searching for the word
> "font" in the use statement example above would fail.  So would text
> selection for the same reasons.
>

Strictly speaking, you also lose the ability to specify kerning pairs for the 
"fo" combination (and others alike). Hence, you'd need to manually lay it out 
correctly so the word "font" doesn't look funny. Additionally, if Asian 
languages were being used you'd have to manually place the characters in the top 
right hand corner and then align them correctly so they flow downwards nicely. 
Furthermore, for Arabic (and Hebrew I think) I believe the glyphs change 
depending on how they are combined to form a word. Oh the headaches...

While we are on the topic of Asian characters, a cool thing that could be done 
with SVG fonts is different Chinese character mappings. For example, I could 
specified for each traditional Chinese character the equivalent simplified 
Chinese character. Hence, any traditional characters that are written or used in 
a page would automagically come out as simplified Chinese.

...Anthony

>> I would love for someone to point me to more than 100 web pages that use them.
> 
> I would use them if they had better support.  Actually, for basic path
> outline support it isn't that difficult, and covers 90% of the use
> cases.
> 
> I may start using them again anyway. Hopefully Mozilla will come on
> board, Firebug is such a useful tool.
> 
> 
> --
> Cheers!
> Rick
> 
> 
>

Received on Sunday, 6 June 2010 23:51:15 UTC