TECH: Fonts on the Web?

David J. Peterson ta nugatu-r:

> When it comes to webpages, though, it seems like this shouldn't be an
> issue, but it is. I mean, think about it: On your webspace, you have a
> file called whatever.css that tells the web browser how to deal with all
> the HTML elements. You also have tons of file that can take up quite a
> large amount of space on your webspace--e.g., files for download,
> .jpg's, etc. Fonts, by comparison, are tiny little files, the largest
> ones no bigger than a megabyte or two, if that. Why on Earth can't you
> have something like CSS that that tells the web browser: "Use the
> following font *which is housed on my webspace at the following url*"?
> Web browsers already cache images--even versions of a particular web
> page. Why can't it cache fonts in *exactly* the same way? The user
> wouldn't have to download and install the font: the information on the
> webpage would simply use the font that's been uploaded to wherever the
> webpage tells the browser to look for it. What prevents this from being
> a reality?
Theoretically, it's possible in CSS 3:

"Note that we can include within a declaration some instructions for
intelligent substitution, downloading, and synthesis, as in the following
(hypothetical) example:

@font-face {
font-family: "Heisei Mincho W3";
unicode-range: U+3000-FA2D, U+FF00-FFEE;
src: url("http://not.found.anywhere/heiseiw3.otf"
     format("opentype");
units-per-em: 2048;
panose-: 2 0 5 3 0 0 0 2 0 4;
widths: U+3000-FA2D 2048, U+FF00-FF5F 2048, U+FF60-FFEE 1024;
bbox: -, -, 2048, 1755;
ascent: 1653; descent: -;
}

In this case, the browser will first try to make an intelligent
substitution for the font (and the Panose-1 classification is of crucial
importance to that attempt); then it will try to download the font, and if
it fails, it will attempt a substitution through "synthesis" using a
generic font-provided, yet again, that **the browser is capable of
carrying out all these operations, which is not yet the case today**."

That's the tiny problem -- it just doesn't work.


--
Przemysław Ziobrowski
"To jest tak proste, że nie można tego zrozumieć"
                          przysłowie qirańskie