Re: CSS21 @font-face removal

On Monday, October 20, 2003, 8:31:09 AM, David wrote:


>> I am sure there are good reasons for removing @font-face [2]
>> from CSS 2.1 font capabilities. [1].

DW> I think that is because it fails the "two interoperable
DW> implementations" rule.

No, it doesn't. Your statement is factually incorrect. However, I
guess its for the CSS WG to explain why they removed this feature.

DW>  IE and Netscape didn't share a common font format.

Of course, there are only two implementations of CSS in the world ....
and yes, I suspect that "HTML+CSS browsers we are familiar with" was
the reason it was dropped. Which is a poor reason, unless CSS 2.1
starts saying explicitly that it is aimed at HTML+CSS only and not,
say, XML+CSS.

The font format is irrelevant, incidentally, since Netscape 4.x, which
did support a form of font downloading, did not implement CSS
@font-face at all.

DW> (Note the
DW> problem with creating a font format is not describing the font, but
DW> enforcing intellectual property rules.  Microsoft's implementation
DW> locked the font to a particular URL.)

>> I have a concern that this impacts users of minority languages more than
>> others.

Yes, it does. Furthermore, it impacts mobile web users more than
others because the 'everyone has fonts by these names' assumption
falls down flat there.

DW> I don't think there is much awareness of the feature even in such
DW> communities.

Again, you would need to demonstrate that.

DW>  The only example I've seen was a Symbol font hack
DW> (misrepresenting ISO 8859/1 characters as glyphs for something else)
DW> for Telugu.

I suggest you look harder if you have seen only a single example.

DW>   (That was on an explicit search for font-embedding -
DW> something that produced few hits at the time.)  None of the Western
DW> academic sites for Chinese use them, even though people are quite likely
DW> not to have the fonts.

Since when is Chinese a minority language? Last I looked it was the
world's number one language.


-- 
 Chris                            mailto:chris@w3.org

Received on Monday, 20 October 2003 10:22:41 UTC