[OpenFontLibrary] Firefox 3.5 is out!

[Dave Crossland]

2009/7/3 Nicolas Spalinger <nicolas_spalinger at sil.org>:
> 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... :-(

Oh yes, this is just a long term idea :-)

> 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

Great point!

>>> 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?

http://www.mail-archive.com/openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org/msg01800.html
is the start of the thread, and
http://www.mail-archive.com/openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org/msg01810.html
is the end, where Liam says that he thinks USE isn't infringing.

> Do we really have the time/energy for a patent war?

I was concerned about that, but, I think Liam is right: we won't get one.

> 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.

Monotype employees on www-style have said that their initial patent
grant proposal was a mistake, and they would of course make a GPL
compatible grant since they WANT browsers to implement EOT.

Also, there is already a GPL converter: http://code.google.com/p/ttf2eot/

Cheers,
Dave