Re: Fwd: SVG Fonts

On 10/09/09 9:27 AM, codedread wrote:
> On Sep 9, 3:10 pm, "Robert O'Callahan"<[email protected]>  wrote:
>> But what are they used for that a custom, downloadable TTF/OTF font could
>> not be used for?
>
> The same question could be asked about Flash vs. Canvas/SVG.

Sure. The main problem with Flash is that Adobe controls it. Secondary 
problems are that it duplicates a ton of functionality in deployed Web 
specs and doesn't integrate well with them either.

The OTF spec seems more open to me: no one vendor's implementation 
completely determines what OTF is, and no one vendor controls its 
evolution. It doesn't duplicate deployed Web functionality, and 
integrates reasonably well (in that Web apps hardly ever need direct 
access to glyph data). So I don't think the situations are very similar.

> The point is that this:
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/otff.htm
> or
> http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/c052136_ISO_IEC_14496-22_2009(E).zip
>
> do not look like the Web to me.  Do they to you?

I agree that View Source and having a DOM are good features of SVG Fonts.

> I've been told that TTF/OTF fonts can provide better hinting or
> whatever.  That's great and I'm glad that browsers support @font-face
> for this purpose, but to me this is something like the equivalent of
> linking to a raster image: it's a binary blob.  As a developer I have
> to do a lot more research to be able to view the source, hack it,
> change it, inspect it, mash it up, etc.  This lowers the barrier of
> entry and means that probably that many less people will do it.

I'm sympathetic. The only thing is that the font design community is 
already entirely committed to TTF/OTF and there are lots of good tools 
from many vendors for working with it (including free ones). I don't 
believe that being able to modify SVG fonts with a text editor is going 
to open up font design to a much greater community.

I'm honestly trying to gather information here --- I'm currently unsure 
in my own mind whether SVG Fonts is worth doing or not.

Rob