Re: Announcing new font compression project

On Friday, March 30, 2012, 1:20:24 AM, Sylvain wrote:


SG> Re-enacting old battles never goes out of style but if there is
SG> such interest in it I suggest starting a separate thread
SG> (tentative subject line: =E2=80=98The MTX conspiracy!=E2=80=99).

Thanks Sylvain. I was just composing a similar message.

SG>   I=E2=80=99d rather read concrete feedback on Raph=E2=80=99s intruigui=
ng proposal=20

Yes.

So concretely, this is a WOFF update that uses the same overall structure a=
nd has similar benefits (such as inclusion of license and other metadata al=
ong with the font) but produces improved compression due to three things:

- MTX-derived table rearrangement to pre-compress and remove redundancies o=
r derivable information
- LZMA compression (or is it LZMA2)?
- optional multi-table streams rather than one stream per table

When considering a new compression scheme for something already widely depl=
oyed, the following questions seem pertinent:

- is the improved compression significant enough to warrant a change (it se=
ems that the answer is yes here, although it would be good to see more data=
 with a wide variety of fonts)
- is the compression scheme well documented, with an open and freely implem=
entable specification (seems so but again this needs to be verified)
- is there implementor interest
- are there any concerns regarding security
- are there any concerns regarding patent claims


--=20
 Chris Lilley   Technical Director, Interaction Domain                =20
 W3C Graphics Activity Lead, Fonts Activity Lead
 Co-Chair, W3C Hypertext CG
 Member, CSS, WebFonts, SVG Working Groups