Re: TECH: Font Embedding

----- "David J. Peterson" <dedalvs@...> a écrit :

> I'm not sure I understand this new product correctly, but
> will this "fix" the whole display problem on the web if the
> font creator buys the product, or does the user have to buy
> it too?
>
> http://www.fontlab.com/photofont/webready
>
This is a server-side technology. So the user doesn't need to buy anything.

As far as I see it, the technology uses Flash and Javascript to replace on the
fly specific HTML entities with Flash applets, so the user needs Flash
installed and Javascript on in order to enjoy the effect. It seems to have
quite a few advantages:
- the original page source doesn't contain any weird mark-up, so it is fully
searchable, crawlable, and can be standards-compliant.
- it degrades gracefully: if the user has disabled Javascript or doesn't have
Flash, the text is just shown as specified by the original mark-up, so you
don't get to enjoy a beautiful font, but the text is still appearing correctly,
as it appeared in the page HTML source.
- it supports copy&paste.
But there are also a few disadvantages:
- it doesn't seem to handle zooming very well (the text stays in a single size,
even when using this "web outline font" thing).
- if your goal was to show a text in a conscript, users with Javascript disabled
and/or no Flash plugin (anyone checking your page on an iPhone, for instance)
will just see gibberish.
- it is extremely slow (as it needs to replace pieces of text on the fly with
Flash applets) and thus is only viable for headings or very short pieces of
text.

But until CSS3 web fonts become supported by the main browsers, it seems to be the
only solution worth using. It does beat using pictures, although it still feels
like a crutch rather than a real solution to the problem.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.

http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl

It takes a straight mind to create a twisted conlang.

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