Re: downloadable fonts in FF 3.1 - better for MathML?

[email protected] wrote:
> Hi Alvaro,
> The issue of automatic downloading of the STIX fonts was already
> discussed previously in this group in May-June 2008. See
> http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.tech.mathml/browse_thread/thread/2c4a53f71f0144fd#

Issues may have been discussed, but they would have probably been 
discussed in a situation where the choices were: (1) download needed 
fonts with Firefox, (2) require the user to download and install fonts. 
There was not a third option: (3) automatically download fonts when the 
user needs them.

Will there be issues with this? Of course. Every opportunity opens new 
issues. But we keep making new things....

License restrictions? I would think there would be less of an issue, 
since nobody has to be re-distributing the fonts. MathML content can 
point to the original site, where the user can initiate the download 
(implicitly) themselves, and the license seems to allow that. If the 
browser mediates for them with the site and makes the installation 
easier, that would not interfere with the relationship between the 
licensor and licensee.

Most of the points made in that thread are still somewhat relevent, but 
having fonts automatically changes the situation so that many of those 
concerns are addressed. So, this should make things easier for users, yes?

And people in the discussions seem to (mostly) agree that making things 
easier for users would help adoption, so there it is.

- ray

> As far as I understood there are legal obstructions of doing that.
> Cheers, Samy
> ----------------------
> On Dec 12, 8:54 pm, Alvaro <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Yes, I gues that's the idea: that the STIX fonts can get donwloaded
>> automagically when needed by a math page without the user explicitly
>> downloading and installing them.
>>
>> Sounds good to me.
>>
>> [email protected] escribió:
>>
>>> Hi ray,
>>> I guess you already know about the STIX fonts:
>>> http://www.mozilla.org/projects/mathml/fonts/
>>> which work OK with MathML. Why do you need different fonts?
>>> Cheers, Samy
>>> ---------------------------------
>>> On Dec 12, 1:56 am, Ray Kiddy <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> I saw something and, before I get too excited about it, I thought I
>>>> would check with others.
>>>> On the Firefox 3.1 Developer page, I see:
>>>>    http://developer.mozilla.org/en/Firefox_3.1_for_developers:
>>>>    # @font-face allows sites to link to downloadable fonts
>>>>      so that Firefox may render sites more precisely as
>>>>      intended (including being able to display Unicode
>>>>      characters not otherwise supported).
>>>> So, if I understand this, it may be possible to be _sure_ that one could
>>>> display some bit of MathML on this version of Firefox. Obviously there
>>>> will be resource management issues, and I expect there will be things to
>>>> write bugs about, but this does change the game, yes?
>>>> So, I'm excited. I think.
>>>> We may be able to get away from requiring font downloads to use MathML,
>>>> yes? No?
>>>> cheers - ray
>