[OpenFontLibrary] font linking bandwidth issues

Nicolas Spalinger nicolas_spalinger at sil.org
Tue Apr 28 12:35:49 PDT 2009


James Weiner wrote:
> Hello fellow OFLBers,
> 
> I have a little problem you might like to mull over, one that could
> apply to any font using font linking on the web.
> 
> I'm currently working on a web site that uses a common font, but the
> font is not common enough that I can rely on the font stack (which
> depends on people having it installed), so I was wanting to use font
> linking to pull it into the site. The only problem is that the total
> size of the two weights of the font is ~600Kb which is far too much to
> expect people to download (even with broadband as fast download time is
> crucial for text). Something up to 100Kb would be OK. Does anyone know
> any way of sub-setting a font easily? It's a commercial font and I have
> a license covering its use on the web but I can't edit the font files
> directly.
> 
> Any help appreciated!
> 
> Cheers, James


Hi James,

Well, if the license doesn't permit modification, technical solutions
are not going to be able to help...

With a font you have rights to modify I'd recommend trying out using
http://fonts.philip.html5.org/ for which source code is released under
MIT/X11.

Notice how it does the subsetting gracefully: it does not strip away
upstream copyright and licensing notices and handles renaming properly.

HTH


-- 
Nicolas Spalinger, NRSI volunteer
Debian/Ubuntu font teams / OpenFontLibrary
http://planet.open-fonts.org


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