[OpenFontLibrary] [GFD] Treatment of the OFL in the wild

[Khaled Hosny]

On Tue, Jun 04, 2013 at 11:19:28AM -0400, Dave Crossland wrote:
> Embedding fonts you can't extract easily is ok too. The point here is that
> Web fonts are never embedding, they are always separate resources that are
> linked to documents.

And so are fonts embedded in PDF files; you can embed the whole font
totally unchanged, neither subsetting or any other change is mandatory
and the fonts are separate resources inside the PDF file. There is
technically zero difference between embedding a font in a HTML or PDF
file.

Regards,
Khaled

> On Jun 4, 2013 11:13 AM, "Vernon Adams" <vern at newtypography.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> > Are we saying that embedding a font that a user can extract, is a
> > perfectly acceptable (i.e. FLOSS-like) way of distributing a libre font?
> > I like the idea of that, but i'm trying to think of what weaknesses in
> > that method, and what could be ways to enable embedding as a means of
> > distribution whilst also protecting the freedom of the font?
> >
> > -vern
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On 4 Jun 2013, at 08:05, Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Extracting the fonts is just as easy
> > >
> > > On Jun 4, 2013 4:59 AM, "Victor Gaultney" <vtype at gaultney.org> wrote:
> > > On 3 Jun 2013, at 23:47, Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny at eglug.org> wrote:
> > >
> > >> You can embed a webfont as base64 encoded string inside the HTML file.
> > >
> > > Good point, Khaled. That does sound like traditional embedding. The key
> > differences from standard web fonts use are that:
> > >
> > > - The font is delivered as part of the HTML file, not a separate resource
> > > - The font is provided by the same server as the rest of the doc
> > > - The font is used for only one document
> > > - The font is always present, even if the doc is viewed offline
> > >
> > > I'm not sure whether an embedded web font would be any more difficult to
> > extract than normal web fonts. Anyone have thoughts on this?
> > >
> > > These differences are significant. Nicolas has been out of the office
> > for a couple of weeks. When he gets back in the office I'll talk with him
> > about adjusting the FAQ and web fonts paper to address fonts delivered
> > within the HTML file.
> > >
> > >> Even the common case of just linking to the file is not much different
> > >> from bundling the font in the zip container of ODT or DOCX.
> > >
> > > I think it is. In a zip the fonts travel with the doc and they cannot be
> > used by other docs unless you extract them.
> > >
> > > V
> >
> >