[OpenFontLibrary] format() for .otf fonts

[Liam R E Quin]

On Wed, 2009-04-22 at 11:18 +0300, Henri Sivonen wrote:
> I noticed that the copy-pasteable CSS snippets have the wrong format()  
> string for .otf fonts / fonts with PostScript outlines.
> 
> It seems that all CSS snippets say format("truetype"). It seems to me  
> that CSS snippets linking to .otf files should say format("opentype")  
> instead.

Note that ".otf" files don't necessarily have PostScript outlines;
they can also be TrueType fonts with extra tables.  It seems
unreasonable to expect users to determine this, especially as
it could vary even between two versions of the same font.

The CSS snippets should probably be corrected to say truetype,
opentype, type1, or whatever, it's true, although the nature of
being a Web browser seems to be having to cope with errors...

> This is relevant if Opera 10 ships with only .ttf support. Perhaps  
> it's relevant for Prince 6 compatibility, too, but I haven't tested.

The more important issue with OpenType fonts really is OpenType
layout -- e.g. handling ligatures, glyph substitution, positioning
and the other extra features primarily for i18n.  Support for
OpenType fetures such as historical ligatures via the CSS font
variant syntax has been proposed but I'm not sure any of the
current generation of Web browsers has text handling that
sophisticated yet.

Liam


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Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
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