Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What's the big deal about @font-face anyway?
Id voice your concern on the www-style list, since css3 web fonts isn't a final rec yet, and I expect more font fun in css4... :) Regards, Dave On 30 May 2009, 1:43 AM, Karl Berry k...@freefriends.org wrote: You could always override other people's design choices in your own browser if needed: h... All I want to do with font-face is disable it. Is that possible? I looked at these links but did not see the answer. I'm as cognizant of the need for good design as the next person, but I simply have next to no bandwidth and I can't waste it on font downloads happening when I don't ask for them. karl
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What's the big deal about @font-face anyway?
All I want to do with font-face is disable it. Is that possible? Sure, use an old browser which doesn't support it.
[OpenFontLibrary] What's the big deal about @font-face anyway?
Hi, I hope I don't get flamed for this. I'm not a typophile, but an i18n'er. I've been working all my adult life making sure GNOME is accessible to people in any language they wish to use it with. I fully understand the importance of having good, high quality, legible, fonts. I also appreciate an Open font library. I was making a video last week and wanted a fancy script font. Surfed to OFLB and downloaded one in under a minute. What I don't understand is, why is it a good idea to let website designers choose what font *I* read their text with? It's a basic usability question. I don't have Tahoma and Verdana and Arial installed for a reason. I like the text I read the way I read it the easiest. So, please tell me, how is making it easier for website designers to enforce their type on me a good thing? Thanks, behdad
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What's the big deal about @font-face anyway?
On Fri, 2009-05-29 at 10:30 -0400, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: [...] What I don't understand is, why is it a good idea to let website designers choose what font *I* read their text with? It's a basic usability question. It's a balance. Like Flash™, on the one foot it allows people to experiment with new user interface ideas, and lets anyone be a user interface designer, and, on the other foot, it forces everyone to be a user interface designer. So yes, we'll no doubt see some 1994-style geocities Web pages with 30 fonts on them, all blinking and in different colours, just as when Pagemaker was released. And on the other hand, after the disturbance has died down and there's some collective wisdom, we'll see some really good designs. Of course, there are also i18n reasons to supply a font -- if you're writing in a script that has poor support on major platforms, you no longer have to decide between text-in-images or telling people to install a font. Now, just wait until you discover that Mozilla and Safari/Webkit have implemented CSS transforms, so that you can stretch and distort your text too! Liam -- Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/ Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/ Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What's the big deal about @font-face anyway?
On 05/29/2009 10:57 AM, Liam R E Quin wrote: Of course, there are also i18n reasons to supply a font -- if you're writing in a script that has poor support on major platforms, you no longer have to decide between text-in-images or telling people to install a font. This made me smile. It was just ten years ago when I was writing PHP code to generate images from text because Netscape didn't support Arabic / Persian. Then I figured that the bidi handling is more complex than I had thought. UAX#9, FriBidi, ... the rest is history as they say. :) behdad
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What's the big deal about @font-face anyway?
+1 And one important effect I think expected by many, is that the web becomes more attractive for professional graphic designers, Who at the moment far prefer working in print exactly because of the control over typography, layout, measurements etc… And are skilled in using these elements to create readable and accessible text Which is not to say they do that all the time, because tradition tends to bore people :-) But the idea is with things like web-fonts you could expect more print- designers bringing their expertise to the web, Though there would still be a lot to be desired, stuff as basal as the possibility to do lay-out beyond the specific one-column lineair lay out css was designed to style, for example… Eric Op 29 mei 2009, om 16:57 heeft Liam R E Quin het volgende geschreven: On Fri, 2009-05-29 at 10:30 -0400, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: [...] What I don't understand is, why is it a good idea to let website designers choose what font *I* read their text with? It's a basic usability question. It's a balance. Like Flash™, on the one foot it allows people to experiment with new user interface ideas, and lets anyone be a user interface designer, and, on the other foot, it forces everyone to be a user interface designer. So yes, we'll no doubt see some 1994-style geocities Web pages with 30 fonts on them, all blinking and in different colours, just as when Pagemaker was released. And on the other hand, after the disturbance has died down and there's some collective wisdom, we'll see some really good designs. Of course, there are also i18n reasons to supply a font -- if you're writing in a script that has poor support on major platforms, you no longer have to decide between text-in-images or telling people to install a font. Now, just wait until you discover that Mozilla and Safari/Webkit have implemented CSS transforms, so that you can stretch and distort your text too! Liam -- Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/ Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/ Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What's the big deal about @font-face anyway?
On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 6:30 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: What I don't understand is, why is it a good idea to let website designers choose what font *I* read their text with? Think of paper books :) Alexandre
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What's the big deal about @font-face anyway?
On 05/29/2009 11:10 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote: On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 6:30 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: What I don't understand is, why is it a good idea to let website designers choose what font *I* read their text with? Think of paper books :) Their limitation that I can't resize the type you mean? ;) behdad Alexandre
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What's the big deal about @font-face anyway?
Behdad Esfahbod wrote: Hi, I hope I don't get flamed for this. I'm not a typophile, but an i18n'er. I've been working all my adult life making sure GNOME is accessible to people in any language they wish to use it with. I fully understand the importance of having good, high quality, legible, fonts. I also appreciate an Open font library. :-) I was making a video last week and wanted a fancy script font. Surfed to OFLB and downloaded one in under a minute. What I don't understand is, why is it a good idea to let website designers choose what font *I* read their text with? It's a basic usability question. I don't have Tahoma and Verdana and Arial installed for a reason. I like the text I read the way I read it the easiest. You could always override other people's design choices in your own browser if needed: http://kb.mozillazine.org/UserContent.css http://uwstopia.nl/blog/2006/01/my-fonts-are-better-than-yours So, please tell me, how is making it easier for website designers to enforce their type on me a good thing? More freedom to them :-) IMHO there will always be good and less good designs... Beauty in the eyes of the beholder as they say but with an open web, the beholder can tweak things to his linking too. But I think for many people @font-face will be a great enabler: they will have a much nicer solution for publishing content on the web (or platforms using web-technologies) via open standards and have to worry about pictures and problematic encodings to represent text. Thanks, behdad -- Nicolas Spalinger, NRSI volunteer Debian/Ubuntu font teams / OpenFontLibrary http://planet.open-fonts.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What's the big deal about @font-face anyway?
On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 9:30 AM, Behdad Esfahbod beh...@behdad.org wrote: So, please tell me, how is making it easier for website designers to enforce their type on me a good thing? Right now, people use sIFR or image replacement. This is hard for a viewer to change. By moving to @font-face, the viewer can still win because they can have an !important user stylesheet. I'd argue that @font-face ubiquity means the viewer haves more, not less, control.
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What's the big deal about @font-face anyway?
Nicolas Spalinger wrote: So, please tell me, how is making it easier for website designers to enforce their type on me a good thing? More freedom to them :-) and more visibility for open fonts too: as designers get the chance to use fonts besides the MS/Apple non-free 'core-fonts' in order to achieve a consistent look among platforms, the spotlight will be open for many other creations.
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What's the big deal about @font-face anyway?
Nicolas Spalinger wrote: ... But I think for many people @font-face will be a great enabler: they will have a much nicer solution for publishing content on the web (or platforms using web-technologies) via open standards and have to worry about pictures and problematic encodings to represent text. There will still be lots of problems for quite a while - e.g. there are fonts that work on the PC and Linux versions of Firefox, but not on the Mac version; the support for OpenType is very different on PC Mac, which is a real issue for non-Latin scripts. - Chris
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What's the big deal about @font-face anyway?
On 05/29/2009 12:16 PM, Christopher Fynn wrote: Nicolas Spalinger wrote: ... But I think for many people @font-face will be a great enabler: they will have a much nicer solution for publishing content on the web (or platforms using web-technologies) via open standards and have to worry about pictures and problematic encodings to represent text. There will still be lots of problems for quite a while - e.g. there are fonts that work on the PC and Linux versions of Firefox, but not on the Mac version; the support for OpenType is very different on PC Mac, which is a real issue for non-Latin scripts. This will change hopefully by the end of the year. Firefox plans to use HarfBuzz on all platforms. behdad - Chris
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What's the big deal about @font-face anyway?
On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 8:27 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: This will change hopefully by the end of the year. Firefox plans to use HarfBuzz on all platforms. Speaking of which... What is the best way to track HarfBuzz progress? Alexandre
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What's the big deal about @font-face anyway?
On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 4:35 PM, Jeremy Dunck jdu...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 9:30 AM, Behdad Esfahbod beh...@behdad.org wrote: So, please tell me, how is making it easier for website designers to enforce their type on me a good thing? Right now, people use sIFR or image replacement. This is hard for a viewer to change. By moving to @font-face, the viewer can still win because they can have an !important user stylesheet. I'd argue that @font-face ubiquity means the viewer haves more, not less, control. Or cufón. Simos
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What's the big deal about @font-face anyway?
On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 11:35 AM, Simos Xenitellis simos.li...@googlemail.com wrote: On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 4:35 PM, Jeremy Dunck jdu...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 9:30 AM, Behdad Esfahbod beh...@behdad.org wrote: So, please tell me, how is making it easier for website designers to enforce their type on me a good thing? Right now, people use sIFR or image replacement. This is hard for a viewer to change. By moving to @font-face, the viewer can still win because they can have an !important user stylesheet. I'd argue that @font-face ubiquity means the viewer haves more, not less, control. Or cufón. Yeah, I should have mentioned, but I think the viewer still doesn't have control over cufón, right?
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What's the big deal about @font-face anyway?
El Fri, 29 May 2009 10:30:50 -0400 Behdad Esfahbod beh...@behdad.org escribió: Hi, What I don't understand is, why is it a good idea to let website designers choose what font *I* read their text with? you always have the possibility to change to your own page style in the browser page layout design or typography design are not only decorative issues, are another layer of meaning! how is making it easier for website designers to enforce their type on me a good thing? is a good thing, as you think it is good that in the world different languages are spoken, not a single saludos!
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What's the big deal about @font-face anyway?
On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 5:43 PM, Jeremy Dunck jdu...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 11:35 AM, Simos Xenitellis simos.li...@googlemail.com wrote: On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 4:35 PM, Jeremy Dunck jdu...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 9:30 AM, Behdad Esfahbod beh...@behdad.org wrote: So, please tell me, how is making it easier for website designers to enforce their type on me a good thing? Right now, people use sIFR or image replacement. This is hard for a viewer to change. By moving to @font-face, the viewer can still win because they can have an !important user stylesheet. I'd argue that @font-face ubiquity means the viewer haves more, not less, control. Or cufón. Yeah, I should have mentioned, but I think the viewer still doesn't have control over cufón, right? It would be up to the website to offer the functionality for the visitor to select an alternative font as the preferred font. Would require a fast server with many autogenerated fonts. This would be easier if it was possible to negotiate between the browser and website as to which fonts are desired, sort of 'Accept-Font' (similar to Accept-Encoding and Accept-Language). Can the browser negotiate with the web server which font it would prefer to see? Simos
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What's the big deal about @font-face anyway?
On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 6:32 PM, Simos Xenitellis simos.li...@googlemail.com wrote: ... This would be easier if it was possible to negotiate between the browser and website as to which fonts are desired, sort of 'Accept-Font' (similar to Accept-Encoding and Accept-Language). Can the browser negotiate with the web server which font it would prefer to see? Expecting web sites, in general, to have that much respect for their audience is giving them too much credit. Something that benefits only the viewer must be in the hands of the viewer, IMHO.
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What's the big deal about @font-face anyway?
You could always override other people's design choices in your own browser if needed: http://kb.mozillazine.org/UserContent.css http://uwstopia.nl/blog/2006/01/my-fonts-are-better-than-yours All I want to do with font-face is disable it. Is that possible? I looked at these links but did not see the answer. I'm as cognizant of the need for good design as the next person, but I simply have next to no bandwidth and I can't waste it on font downloads happening when I don't ask for them. karl
