Fonts for Web documents come from different sources: they can already be on the reader's machine, they can be carried inside the document (possible with SVG, e.g.), or they can be indicated with a link and downloaded on demand. That last possibility exists in CSS and SVG under the name of Web Fonts and is in study for XSL. After a keyword that occurs in CSS it's often also called @font-face.
Fonts traditionally have licenses that fall into a few broad categories. An important category consist of licenses for embedding. That means the person who bought the font can make documents with it and give them away together with the font, but the receiver of those documents may not separate the font from the documents and use it for his own documents.
To indicate that a linked font should be treated as embedded, Microsoft developed the EOT format, because the OpenType format, the most common font format, doesn't have any way to flag such a status. EOT is in fact a small wrapper around OpenType. EOT remained proprietary from 1998 until 2008, but then Microsoft submitted it to W3C. W3C is currently investigating if it can be made into a Recommendation for font embedding on the Web.
W3C circulated an informal proposal for a working group to develop an EOT recommendation among its members and is talking to software makers, designers and font vendors about the requirements.
After the informal discussions on the possibility of an EOT Recommendation, there is likely to be a formal review among the W3C members only and, if the outcome is positive, a new working group for fonts.
| Group | Chair | Team Contact | Charter |
|---|---|---|---|
This Activity Statement was prepared for the October 2008 W3C Advisory Committee Meeting (Members only) per section 5 of the W3C Process Document. Generated from group data.
Bert Bos, Style Activity LeadModified: $Date: 2008/09/06 12:49:29 $