Re: SVG Fonts inside of OpenType fonts? [Cross-post from [email protected]]

Tab Atkins <[email protected]> Tue, 28 Jun 2011 10:58:54 -0700
Newsgroups gmane.comp.web.fonts,gmane.comp.web.svg,gmane.comp.web.css.general
Message-ID <BANLkTimXwR3LhhcgFp99mUWRT1uEp=1qLf-_eqdAKY8V4VzMew@mail.gmail.com>
On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 3:41 AM, Adam Twardoch (List)
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Obviously, SVG Fonts have some good and interesting concepts. One of
> their advantages is that they can -- at least in theory -- freely
> combine all aspects of SVG: multi-colored, multi-layered vector
> graphics, and bitmaps.
>
> However, SVG Fonts also have some serious drawbacks: while the glyph
> definition using SVG is a great concept, all the other aspects of SVG
> Fonts that make them work as a font, especially the character mapping,
> access to alternate glyphs, and the layout behavior, are somewhat
> under-defined and hard to implement. Therefore, it's rather unlikely
> that at any time, all OS and application vendors will agree on a good,
> full implementation of SVG Fonts.

While I certainly like many of the abilities that SVG fonts can bring,
I was under the impression that the problems with them run further
than what you list.  For example, you theoretically have the ability
to add an <html:video> to a <glyph> (loading the data from a data:
url, if necessary).  How does this work?

~TJ