From: Christopher John Fynn (cfynn@gmx.net)
Date: Sun Jun 15 2003 - 09:09:22 EDT
"Philippe Verdy" <verdy_p@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>.... removing the unnecessary
> features that Microsoft wants to promote, such as proprietary
web fonts for CSS2, ....
Phillipe
I presume you are talking about "embedded" web fonts - since if
CSS is simply used to get the "best match", using fonts already
on
and supported by the client system, it doesn't really matter
what
format the font is in.
Do you know of any *practical* alternative form of embedded
web fonts to Microsoft's EOT ("Embedded Open Type") format
when it comes to pages that use Unicode and complex scripts?
(I know that EOT fonts only work on IE - but having an embedded
font format which works on the majority of the browsers in use
is
better than having none.)
Sure you can include a link to an original font file in TTF,
OTF or other format - but many fonts aren't freely
re-distributable in their original format - though they often
do have some kind of embedding permission.
Last time I looked Bitstreams PFR format seemed to be pretty
well useless when it came to Unicode and complex scripts,
it is was just as "proprietary", and you needed to buy a tool
to create them (WEFT is free) - [This may be a reasonable
expense for people creating commercial sites but not for
many people creating their own personal websites.]
I've seen various other proposals for web fonts (as part of PNG
and so on) - but so far there don't seem to be tools for making
these fonts or applications that can make use of them.
If you know a practical alternative, particularly one that works
for a variety of non-latin scripts, please let us know.
EOT fonts have been around for quite a while now and they work.
So, what I would like to see, is Microsoft open up the spec for
EOT
fonts so that other applications and platforms can use them.
BTW if you take a look at http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-fonts/
you will see that people from Microsoft seem to be heavily
involved in the fonts aspect of CSS.
- Chris
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