The goal of this activity is to standardize an interoperable and royalty-free format for embedded fonts, which allows user agents to temporarily download TrueType or OpenType fonts from the Web when displaying Web pages. The download mechanism is Web Fonts, already standardized at W3C.
The targeted audience for this activity is:
The mechanism by which a style sheet or Web page indicates the location and properties of downloadable fonts (Web Fonts) is already a W3C Recommendation, used and implemented by CSS2 and SVG user agents. Web Fonts does not mandate a particular font format, and in the past this has hindered interoperability. The goal of the proposed Working Group would be to create a W3C Royalty Free Recommendation which documents a format that allows fonts to be embedded.
Such a format could, e.g., be designed as an extension to OpenType, as proposed at a recent meeting during TPAC, or it could be more like the EOT wrapper format, recently submitted to W3C.
The EOT wrapper allows the style sheet author to specify for which domains the font may be used. This is not a technological impediment for those determined to steal fonts – the format contains digital right expressions but does not contain anti-copy schemes – but is sufficient to prevent inadvertent infringement which, we have learned, is sufficient to make existing font vendors feel comfortable with their fonts being so used in conformance with the appropriate font license.
The W3C Recommendation for embedded fonts would use the same principle, but probably in a different syntax.
Fonts need not use the domain locking feature (this is a difference from the existing EOT submission), provided that unrestricted download is in accordance with the font license. Free fonts may thus use the format, too. Free fonts are an important source of typographic variety for Western languages and in some cases are essential for communication in minority or poorly-supported languages.
(As free fonts do not strictly need the domain locking feature, unless they are subsetted, they could in principle also be uploaded in already exiting font formats, such as standard OpenType, provided their license allows that format and the targeted user agents support it.)
For a more detailed context, please see also the For and against standardizing font embedding report.
As outlined in the proposed charter, the general scope of this activity is to allow OpenType fonts to be embedded in Web documents, in particular (but not exclusively) in documents that can refer to fonts via W3C's Web Fonts technology. The font is logically or physically tied to the document, achieved with a bi-directional link between the document and the font resource.
The Fonts Activity would be chartered until March 2010, with its Groups attached to the Hypertext Coordination group.
The activity would initially be composed of one Group:
Total of Team resources would be around 0.3 FTE.
See the charter.
The RF commitments related to EOT and its compression algorithm apply when and if the material becomes part of a W3C Recommendation.
Microsoft is a supporter of the Fonts activity proposal. Several font vendors and type designers expressed opinions very similar to one another: They are in favor of standardizing EOT, believe it will cause more fonts to be created and sold, and believe it protects sufficiently against casual font misuse. Companies with opinions similar to this include Monotype, Adobe, Ascender, Dalton Maag, Hoefler & Frere-Jones, and Bitstream.
The following organizations expressed high concerns about portions of the proposed activity:
See also The stakeholders' positions in the For and against standardizing font embedding report.
There are indications that a format that is simpler than EOT (e.g., no obfuscation, no redundant data, no built-in compression) but still contains the same metadata (“which documents is this font licensed for?”) would take away most of the concerns and still satisfy the requirements of the proponents of EOT.
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