520357 - support new web font format (EOT Lite) in @font-face

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Graphics, enhancement)

Description

[Sergey Sokoloff]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Fidofox/0.1 Firefox/3.5.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Fidofox/0.1 Firefox/3.5.3

Bug 507970 is RESOLVED FIXED now, but only in the sense of WOFF support.

Initially bug 507970 contained several patches related to support of EOT Lite.

This bug is filed in order to request and to track EOT Lite support in Mozilla the platform.

Reproducible: Always




Testcase:

http://people.mozilla.org/~jdaggett/eotlite.html

Python scripts which creates EOT version of an OpenType font:

http://people.mozilla.org/~jdaggett/webfonts/eotlitetool.py

Comment 1

[Sergey Sokoloff]

Yet another TTF2EOT converter (now an online one):

http://www.kirsle.net/wizards/ttf2eot.cgi

Comment 2

[d]

When we already do have so many font formats around, TTF, OTF, EOT and WOFF, what advantages would EOT Lite give?

Comment 3

[Masatoshi Kimura [:emk]]

(In reply to comment #2)
> When we already do have so many font formats around, TTF, OTF, EOT and WOFF,
> what advantages would EOT Lite give?
We *do not* (and will not) support EOT.

Comment 4

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

(In reply to comment #2)
> When we already do have so many font formats around, TTF, OTF, EOT and WOFF,
> what advantages would EOT Lite give?

I think this topic would be better discussed on the W3C mailing list (www-font) and/or by the proposed Fonts Working Group than in a Mozilla bug.

However, _please_ review the mailing list archives before diving in, as there has already been extensive discussion (although not, I think, a clear consensus on the outcome), and a new thread that merely rehashes existing opinions will only serve to sap energy from productive work. Unless there's significant new input to offer, I doubt a new discussion will serve much purpose. It might be more helpful to give any relevant input via the W3C Working Group that will be considering font formats and related issues.

Comment 5

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

The "EOT Lite" proposal seems to have died away, with all the webfont momentum being concentrated in the WOFF standardization and implementation efforts. Closing this as WONTFIX.

Comment 6

[funcod2]

why remove an additional format when there's already a working patch ready to be implemented

Comment 7

[John Daggett (:jtd)]

(In reply to comment #6)
> why remove an additional format when there's already a working patch ready to
> be implemented

That's a good question.  In general we try and limit support for formats that aren't widely supported.  Firefox supports OpenType/WOFF font downloading and that's what other browsers are supporting also (IE9, Chrome, Opera, Safari).  No need to take on the additional cost of maintaining support for formats that aren't widely used or that fill a distinct need.

Comment 8

[funcod2]

Well IMO it would be useful: you could serve Firefox and IE (all versions) the same @font-face property.
It was a bad decision: it would have been easier (for us!) instead of having to handle the syntax hacks.

It's not too late…

Comment 9

[funcod2]

"No need to take on the additional cost of maintaining support for formats that aren't widely used"
IE4+IE5+IE6+IE7+IE8+IE9 combined stats would cover ~45% of the users so Id say it's a very widely supported format.
So please implement this patch before it becomes outdated.

Comment 10

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

(In reply to comment #9)
>Id say it's a very widely supported format.

It's not widely _used_. There are certainly sites that use EOT fonts, but (virtually) all such sites are using EOT _with_ the (proprietary) MTX compression, and so this patch would not support those sites anyway. I'm not aware of any significant number of sites (aside from a few proof-of-concept examples) deploying "EOT Lite" fonts.

Comment 11

[funcod2]

Instead of doing hacks in the @font-face rule we will just need one src declaration to target Firefox and IE…
I understand the "cost of maintaining support" argument but dropping a working patch is nonsense to me.