2009/7/3 Nicolas Spalinger <nicolas_spalin...@sil.org>: > Dave Crossland wrote: >> 2009/7/1 ricardo lafuente <boll...@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
