[OpenFontLibrary] Firefox 3.5 is out!

[Nicolas Spalinger]

Dave Crossland wrote:
> 2009/7/1 ricardo lafuente <bollecs at sollec.org>:
>> would it be too difficult/impractical to have this run on a font submitted
>> to the OFLB and generate the .eot on demand?
> 
> That's the plan; actually, the ideal plan would be to have a mod_eot
> Apache module so that when it saw IE coming, it did a cached
> conversion on the fly so web designers don't have to think about it.

I really recommend focusing on the remaining taks to handle the native
formats first. Always harder to be everything to everyone all the
time... :-(

And to respect the licensing chosen by the authors releasing on OFLB
under the OFL we need to take into account the fact that any format
conversion is not lossless and is creating a Modified Version which
should be named in such a way that it doesn't mess up the namespace: by
respecting the reserved font names defined by the authors.

So any subsetting and conversion process will need to handle the
renaming gracefully:  Foo Sans -> Subsetted Bar

>> i can see the issue in providing files in (another) closed format though. On
>> the other hand, it would eliminate that significant hurdle (IE support) and
>> allow for a statement that fonts in OFLB are cross-browser compatible. Long
>> shot?
> 
> The conversion software is GPL, so the format isn't closed; its patent
> encumbered in the USA, but, we discussed that and decided it didn't
> matter. 

Well, may I ask when did this discussion take place and with whom?
Do we really have the time/energy for a patent war?

I remember statements from Mozilla employees that Firefox will never
implement EOT because of how patent patent-ladden elements can't be
implemented under the GPL.


Cheers,


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


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