I'll certainly be recommending WOFF to my customers as a format for use of their custom fonts on the Web. Its a smart format: easy to support, nicely compressed, preserves digital signatures and custom font data, isn't installable as a desktop font.

EOTL (or CWT as we should probably start calling it) is more problematic because in a couple of significant ways @font-face support doesn't really work in Internet Explorer, so the backwards compatibility benefits of the CWT format are hobbled. Some of my customers are commissioning CFF OpenType fonts, so obviously I can't recommend CWT because it is limited to TTF. The style linking bug in Internet Explorer means that web developers will need to hack their way around this, if possible, in their CSS code, and that looks pretty painful to me. So if a customer with a TTF font were specifically needing backwards compatibility on IE, then I'd have to point them at CWT with caveats, but otherwise I'll be putting my energy into pushing MS to support WOFF a.s.a.p.

[deleted]

@john hudson

In that WOFF and EOTL are on a par in providing the "garden fence" that many font designers felt was a bare minimum of a barrier to instant installability, my assumption, and I'd guess yours, too, is that we can expect to see WOFF in the next version of Internet Explorer.
Personally, I'd be shocked not to see it. And I, among others, will be all over them about it on the IE Blog and monthly chats and knockin' on SG's door if I have to. ;)
I'm familiar with the CSS issues and, as workarounds go, they are just not all that painful. To some, IE can do nothing right and every little thing is a big thing. (Or at least an occasion for a snide comment or two.)
Ironically, Opera 10's font-linking implementation is - unlike IE - buggy as in quirky and unpredictable. Plus it deviates from the standard in much the same way as IE. But outside of my blog, I've yet to see a word of criticism. And the spin on Opera's development blog makes the workarounds for it sound like best practice! (And the even funnier thing is: it just might be best practice. The web community is still figuring out the most coherent and sensible way to make the CSS work. But until we had real implementations to test against, it was pointless.)
Also, Apple has yet to weigh in on support for WOFF in Safari, and until they do, we're largely on hold.
But it's time to get the conversion tools working, surely. Thanks for the input.

Thoughts? Comments? Questions?

Kudos to the Mozilla crew for getting this done so quickly. I am very impressed. But I’m more interested in seeing what Microsoft does. I’m sure that Apple will get on board, but it won’t matter because by then AT&T’s 3G network will have so many users that nobody will be able to download a font.

> If you are a commercial producer of fonts, will you be licensing for use with WOFF and EOTL insofar as those formats differentiate themselves from “raw” or “desktop” OTF and TTF files?

Rich -- I find the wording of your question to be interesting. The phrase "licensing for use with WOFF" suggests that you expect the route to the new world to come via web developers "rolling their own."

I would actually expect that most foundries will choose to license WOFF fonts directly. (No "for use with" necessary.)

When a new font format gets established and achieves widespread implementation, then foundries will start making fonts in that format and providing them for license. This is what they do -- make fonts, not provide material for users to make their own.

What remains to be seen is the licensing and pricing models that will emerge. What will be offered to those who want fonts only for web use? At what price point? What about both print and web versions? What about upgrading from one format to another?

I don't mean to rub you the wrong way with my comment. I agree, this is a potentially significant crossroads. After all the hullabaloo, font producers better get on board quickly and figure out how they want to leverage this development. And they'd better get product to market in a timely fashion.

Is there an estimated timeline for the FF3.6 release?

Will FF3.6 also support EOT Lite?

No word on CWT (EOT Lite) support from Mozilla, despite their testing of that format during the summer.

Kernest just added WOFF support as well:

http://blog.kernest.com/archive/kernest-now-supports-woff-in-firefox-3-6

"But it’s time to get the conversion tools working, surely."
and,
http://blog.kernest.com/archive/kernest-now-supports-woff-in-firefox-3-6

Ain't no flies on Garrick Van Buren! I'm impressed. Again.

@kentlew
First, my apologies to you, Si, John Hudson, and David Berlow for hijacking thread Cufon and (c) from a few weeks ago and not following up.
I have now read all of your comments three times, bookmarked it for future reference, and have written three drafts in reply - all of which somehow didn't rate, in my mind, clicking submit. A mental block, maybe. Plus I had distractions. And sometimes a blog comment is too confining. Big topic. Lots of grey area. Anyway, we're back to it here. Felt rude, sorry.)

"This is what they do [foundries]— make fonts, not provide material for users to make their own."
Says who? I think that's a little presumptuous. Each font designer and their agents will decide how they see their role in this brave new world. (Note to self: Stock up on Soma.)
Some won't want the headache of providing converted files. And, not too far into the future, some technologies like SVG demand extraction of at least some of the data within the font file.
BTW - I don't mind at all you getting prickly about it. All the better. To complicate matters further, at the same time we're dealing with these new technologies, we're also dealing with changes in mood, meaning, and perception among those who create and use the web. I don't have to tell you that there are those who quite knowingly will not recognize or respect Intellectual Property rights. And they will not go away. But still, anyone understands: "Hey, I put a lot of work into this thing, and I'd really like to make a few bucks out of it so I can keep on keep doing it." Gotta feed the bulldog, as the British expression has it. (But let's not go there here. I'll end up with "blog post" traumatic stress, yet again.)

@james puckett
"I’m sure that Apple will get on board"
I'm glad you're sure. AFAIK - They have been totally silent and uninvolved in the issue of Web Fonts other than being the first major player to support linking to "raw" TTF/OTF files using @font-face in Safari. However, if Webkit follows Mozilla's lead, I am assuming they will incorporate support for WOFF into Safari - all the work will have been done for them. No reason not to, unless we're missing something.

@dan_reynolds
"Will FF3.6 also support EOT Lite?"
Looks like no. To me it seems clear they're ignoring it, at least for right now. It will soon break out like this: EOT for IE, TTF/OTF or WOFF for Firefox, TTF/OTF for Safari, Opera, and - the mouse that continues to roar - Chrome.

@john hudson
I'd be happy to start calling EOTL "CWT" except that few will know what I'm referring to and, as you know, there is currently silence from implementors on CWT's status.
(Soon, maybe begin calling it CWT (formerly EOT), or somesuch.)

Rich, I think the fact that WOFF is designed, as Mozilla's own notes indicate, to include ‘metadata and private-use data structures, including predefined fields allowing foundries and vendors to provide license information if desired’ is a good indication that the font developers that advised on and encouraged the development of the format are interested in things like serialisation of web fonts. The format is also designed to fit pretty seamlessly into automated compiling, customisation and shipping workflows, and as well as serialisation I anticipate things like custom subsetting for customer language requirements.

Sure, there are going to be some TTF/OTF licenses that permit you to create WOFF files from desktop fonts, but those are more likely to be free font licenses rather than commercial licenses.

"Sure, there are going to be some TTF/OTF licenses that permit you to create WOFF files from desktop fonts, but those are more likely to be free font licenses rather than commercial licenses."

I agree that will most probably be the case.

>... but those are more likely to be free font licenses rather than commercial licenses.

And how exactly and completely would you describe the "free" web font, (in any format), from the moment the type designer christens it so, to the day the employing web site is no longer to be available?

Cheers!

I don't understand the question, David. By ‘free font license’, I mean fonts with deliberately open licensing permitting users to distribute, modify, convert, etc.

My point to Rich was that commercially licensed fonts are more likely to be delivered in the final use format, rather than delivered in one format with a permission to convert to the final use format. That's the case whether the final use format is WOFF, CWT (EOTL as was), EOT, or TTF/OTF with a permissions and recommendations table.

@dberlow,

David, it think it's fair to say at this point that you're just plain hostile? opposed? to the use of fonts in web pages unless it is on terms that are totally acceptable to you. If I take in total what you've said and written on the subject (which is quite a bit) an educated guess is that nothing short of a required permissions table strongly enforced by software user-agents will satisfy.
This hasn't and won't happen. Doing so would involve huge cost and delay and put the makers of user-agents in an untenable legal position. Sorry, but your fonts aren't that important to anybody else but you. If those are the conditions, you can keep them.
Either you are willing to adjust your business methods to the nature of the technology and the work-flow of those who work with it every day or you aren't.
My belief is that if the right marketing steps are taken, this can be done profitably but you have obviously come to a different conclusion.
I'm tired of the same veiled criticism over and over.
I'd love to discuss all kinds of issues with you, but on this one, I'm done. Too much else to do.
Good luck to you, really. And I hope we can constructively communicate about other aspects of fonts.

Cheers, Rich

Richard, I don't think you understand David's position -- which to be fair, isn't necessarily your fault -- and its pretty clear from your comments that you really don't understand Font Bureau's business.

Sorry, but your fonts aren’t that important to anybody else but you. If those are the conditions, you can keep them.

The list of companies and publications to whom Font Bureau's fonts are important is extensive.

> David, it think it’s fair to say at this point that you’re just plain hostile? opposed? to the use of fonts in web pages unless it is on terms that are totally acceptable to you.

Rich -- I would rephrase it thus: I think it's fair to say at this point that DB is just plain dismissive of the use of fonts in web pages unless it is on terms that yield visual results that are totally acceptable to his standards.

> an educated guess is that nothing short of a required permissions table strongly enforced by software user-agents will satisfy.

I thought one of the reasons that everyone was so skeptical about David's EPAR table is that he has never insisted that the user-agents actually do anything with it. "If UAs aren't required to do anything with the table, how does that solve anything?" is the usual criticism. Which runs a little counter to your statement.

JH>I don’t understand the question, David. By ‘free font license’, I mean fonts with deliberately open licensing permitting users to...

serve.

JH>...distribute, modify, convert, etc.

no, serve. Is Typekit making, licensing and serving free fonts? Microsoft, Apple, Anyone? I'm sure there are a few pieces of crap out there that might even work for display type, but think big. Think millions of users wanting free fonts for their web pages.

It was a completely non-hostile, simple question. Can you build the bottom end of the web type in your head, based on what you know know about web fonts? (well not the very bottom, we've got fonts everyone is sick of there, and not even those are being served).

But Richard's gone now, never to stalk me, so he can accuse me of stalking, again. ;)

Cheers!

David, I never suggested anything at all about either the quality or significance of free fonts to the web. I was pointing out to Rich that the right to convert to a web font format, which he has mentioned a number of times, is something that will likely only apply to fonts under free licenses, not to commercial fonts. I agree with you that such fonts are not going to be satisfactory.

John, I'm not talking quality or significance. Companies have regularly bundled fonts with their composition applications for print since 1986, or even earlier perhaps. Print has a large and useful set of free and cheap font options for the bottom end of the user market. Once a user employs a font and embeds it's image in print, they are done.

No one bundles web fonts. There is no embedding ;;;) on the web. No one is talking about the bottom end of the market. Can you build a model for the bottom end of web type in your head, based on what you know know about web fonts?

Cheers!

David, when you write about 'a few pieces of crap out there', I think I'm justified in taking that as a comment about quality and significance.

One more time: I was responding to a specific comment that Richard made, and pointing out that commercial web font licensing was unlikely to permit the kind of format conversion that he was talking about. That's all. That's all I was talking about. I wasn't trying to ‘build a model’ of anything, only reporting what appears to be the consensus among font vendors: a web font format will be a vendor delivery format, not a user-conversion format. This is the same point that Kent also made in response to Richard. Will there be exceptions to this? Yes, I suggested, but these exceptions will be mainly found in free font licensing (e.g. open source and free-as-in-zealotry).

@all

Look, I get it. It took me long enough but I get it. Somebody thoroughly familiar with the retail font business was open enough to step outside the PR crap and fill me in.

I now understand the disconnect between what gets said by those in the retail font business and the actions of the people in the retail font business.

Just so we understand each other, an example: Vlad Levantovsky posted on another thread that Monotype "supports" the WOFF format. I shot back that Monotype's EULA doesn't license for it. Sii shot back that this wasn't fair. (Still can't figure out why not.)
Two days ago there was a posting on Typotheque's web site saying they "endorse" WOFF.
*And they will license for it soon* But not right now.

Saying you "support" or "endorse" something and then not licensing for it in a meaningful way is sort of like saying that, in the last election, I supported John McCain but I voted for Barack Obama.
You can't blame me for asking WTF?

Look, if you had your druthers, you would want web fonts to go away. In your shoes, so would I. Plus you're uncomfortable with the level of scrutiny it, and guys like me, bring to the business of making and selling fonts, I get it.
And it's OK. I understand more than you could ever know. (In the near future, I'm going to write up my own personal story and *then* maybe you'll accept that statement.)

Lastly, I meant no insult to you David. I went through a period in my life where I did a huge amount of reading about business history and management.
In my mind I was just stating what to me is a simple fact.
There are no companies - in any industry - that are really that important.
At this point, the great General Motors has just about slid into oblivion. To the rest of the world, GM doesn't mean a goddmned thing. I still have plenty of cars to choose from. Yet, I guarantee you there are people within General Motors who - in spite of what is obvious to the rest of the world - still think GM is important. It's human nature, it seems.
If I were a congressman, I think I would have voted to bail out AIG. However, the argument that somehow they were some kind of indispensable entity was BS. Nobody and nothing is.
Everybody makes their adjustments and the world moves on.
That's all I meant. I have no doubt you're top notch.

Rich

>Look, if you had your druthers, you would want web fonts to go away.

Why would anyone in the font business to want web fonts to go away? It's a potentially lucrative new market. Wanting to get it right, I understand, and the difficulty of getting it right I have a glimmer of. But go away? Why do you think that vendors would want that?

Richard, don't worry about insulting me, just leave momma out of it, and we're fine.

>Saying you “support” or “endorse” something and then not licensing for it in a meaningful way is sort of like saying that, in the last election...

My sincerest advice is to stop with the analogies. They crowd the true picture's details out of your thoughts.

Clients are not at all likely to follow the format drama unfolded before us, are they? So support of them, by us, means we supply the client's design choice via whatever web font format(s) we need to serve to meet the client's users' UA/OS demands.

Endorsement to us means we think that more than one format is good, so we don't do much of that. Clients don't care what we endorse as long as what we support is what they need to meet their users' UA/OS demands.

The typical web font license involves the client's selection of a style, and the coverage they wish for (one browser on one platform, or all browsers on all platforms are the current choices), because that's all they want to license, the style.

Thus, we support WOFF, OT and EOTL, endorse only OT, and do not license any of them.

Cheers!

@Richard
Saying you “support” or “endorse” something and then not licensing for it in a meaningful way is sort of like saying that, in the last election, I supported John McCain but I voted for Barack Obama.

There is a big difference between supporting or endorsing a development of new technology and monetizing it. For a new product to be licensed one needs to establish business and distribution models and make sure that production tools are available and reliable, that quality of products and customer experience is up to established company standards, and that technical support personnel is trained and ready to deal with the demanding customers like yourself. This is all really hard to do when the number of web browsers supporting the new technology is *zero*. Firefox 3.6 will be the first browser to support WOFF but it's not even released yet!
Following your own analogy, the election day for web fonts is not even set yet and your accusations of font vendors not "voting" for the candidates they support is way premature!

I went through a period in my life where I did a huge amount of reading about business history and management.

Did you learn anything?

By the way, there is now Mozilla's official announcement. Also see Mr Daggett's article about wOFF support in Firefox 3.6.

Karsten

> If you are a commercial producer of fonts, will you be licensing for use with WOFF and EOTL insofar as those formats differentiate themselves from “raw” or “desktop” OTF and TTF files?

While we're disappointed that Mozilla didn't get behind EOTL (given that the world *really* doesn't need yet another file format), we will be allowing, and promoting, the use of WOFF for our library fonts.

We want to keep things simple, so will probably be including "online users" in the user limit, defining the number of online users as the maximum number of simultaneous requesters of information from a server on which the fonts are installed.

We think that's reasonable and realistic - most websites will barely poke above 1 online user, but larger sites will need larger licences.

We're interested to know how other foundries will be approaching the same issue.

Dave

While we’re disappointed that Mozilla didn’t get behind EOTL, i.e. CWT...

They may yet. As I wrote today on the W3C font list, the arguments in favour of CWT (EOTL as was) are market arguments based on the backwards compatibility benefits of the format. If those benefits are considered important by web authors and designers and their clients, then there should be market pressure on both browser makers and font vendors to support CWT, and that pressure may be strong enough to overcome the political and technical baggage of the EOT-derived format. But given that the technical baggage includes the fact that CFF OpenType fonts are excluded from the backwards compatibility benefits, the market pressure would need to be substantial to interest a lot of font vendors.

WOFF is in a bit of a different situation, in that it has been developed collaboratively and specifically with a web font standardisation process in mind, not a market driven process. Unlike either CWT or naked font linking, WOFF is uncontentious and doesn't come with any baggage attached, so provides a good basis for consensus and voluntary interoperability.

@william berkson
"Why would anyone in the font business to want web fonts to go away?"
Solid reasons, really.
I am happy to explain it as it was explained to me, by more than one source extremely familiar and involved and *employed* by retail font companies. Actually, one of them expressed it quite publicly but it kind of zoomed right past me at the time.
We'll communicate.

@davidberlow
Like I said. I'm have no doubt you're top notch.

@vlad
"Did you learn anything?"
Not enough, it seems. See my reply to William.
But the lady doth protest too much, methinks. I was thinking of posting links to screen shots from fonts.com to really show how prominently Monotype displays its level of "support" but it's too much work.
(I wish I could see the reaction of web authors to your "meet me by the back door" approach to the whole EOT licensing thing.)
Nice zinger, BTW. But I'm from Brooklyn and there's an old saying about fencing with amateurs. A zei gezundt. If you don't know what it means, William B. can probably translate.)

@davidmarshall

Thanks for posting, truly.
The response has been a bit underwhelming, as you can see.
I'd love to know more about what "user limits" you're thinking of and how that's going to work.
A lot of server side software licenses - components and such - work similarly, on a kind of an honor system, usually. Insofar as, unless you get quite intrusive, it's tough to know how many visitors a site is servicing.

@johnhudson
My feeling at this point is that standardization of WOFF or CWT is dead in the water despite best efforts. I can't see how it changes much, either. It was going to be a three format game for at least the next (Richard reaches down and...) ahhhh, you can choose however many number of years you think it will go on.
And, of course, one of the three is off the table because you won't license raw, naked, steamy formats like TTF and OTF.
So prudish.
Looks like TTF only, encoded in CWT (EOTL) or WOFF.
If this is the way it goes, the ball is now really in Apple's court. If they don't support WOFF, retail font vendors are in limbo. Or so it would seem, depending upon one's point of view.
We shall see.

My feeling at this point is that standardization of WOFF or CWT is dead in the water despite best efforts.

You 'feel' this despite the fact that the W3C have now put forward a draft charter for a working group with the specific intention of standardising those two formats?

>A lot of server side software licenses - components and such - work similarly, on a kind of an honor system, usually. Insofar as, unless you get quite intrusive, it’s tough to know how many visitors a site is servicing.

Yes, there's always going to be an element of trust in customers - we can't possibly audit every organization that's ever bought a font licence from us, either for their desktop or their web use.

Half the battle is instigating a model which we can explain to customers, customers can figure out for themselves, and has an element of proportionate reward for the benefit the fonts deliver. I think number-of-visitors is the right model for the web, but I'm not sure we've yet found the right detail.

Dave

>You ’feel’ this despite the fact that the W3C have now put forward a draft charter for a working group with the specific intention of standardising those two formats?

I most definitely do.

http://typophile.com/node/63385#comment-374483

Cheers!

David, you wrote in that other thread: If the W3C accepts a format that requires we mark out fonts as “embeddable” in order to be linkable, we will be on them like a virus that loves stupidity.

Interpretation of the OS/2 embedding bits relative to web font linking is identified as an issue that needs to be resolved. I've made my recommendation, which is that the OS/2 embedding bits be completely ignored for web font purposes, and that this made clear in the WOFF and CWT specs. This is what Firefox and Opera are already doing when serving naked fonts, so it shouldn't make any difference if the same fonts are in a wrapper format.

Ideally, I'd like to see the meanings of ‘embedded', ‘embeddable', ‘linked' and ‘linkable’ given clear, unambiguous and commonly accepted definitions, reflected in all specs including the OT spec. Even if that were the case, there are still situations that remain unclear, e.g. Adam Twardoch's example in which a font is actually embedded in a web page rather than dynamically linked:
http://www.twardoch.com/webfonts/completelyembedded/

> http://www.twardoch.com/webfonts/completelyembedded/

That's cool! how long will that work with which browsers?

Cheers!

@davidmarshall

I was just curious about what the specifics of the arrangement might be.

@john hudson
"You ’feel’ this despite the fact that the W3C have now put forward a draft charter for a working group with the specific intention of standardising those two formats?"

Pessimism seems the most realistic position at this point. The divides to be crossed seem very great. And too many unspoken, hidden agendas.
But it is only a feeling.

I ask, who will be helped by it all, and how? The only thing a W3C recommendation will do is force, we assume, any hold-outs to support either WOFF or CWT (EOTL). And I really don't know if, in actual practice, that makes much of a difference one way or the other at this point.
First, there are thousands and thousands of freely licensed fonts to choose from.
Second, AFAIK, the only major font vendor that has made any kind of an effort to hang a sign saying, "Web Designers Welcome", is Ascender. They relaxed restrictions with EOTL. They started the fontembedding.com web site. They've got demo pages. I can't say I'm absolutely thrilled with their current EULA and marketing approach - which is also a "meet me by the back door" affair at the moment, but at least there's been a clear willingness to market to web customers on terms that are in step with the way web customers are used to working. I mean, you can hope and hope and hope, but you're not going to convince working moms to stop in with the kids at the end of the day for a five course meal.
Monotype has just made it absolutely clear that they will not license to anyone who is not willing to enforce same origin restriction.
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-font/2009OctDec/0111.html
I cannot conceive of a situation that would entice me or anybody to choose one of their typefaces - when so many others are available - with that requirement attached. So they can keep their fonts, keep their EULAs, and have a nice day. (Oh, and don't forget your embedding bits on the way out.)
Font Bureau has made it clear their fonts will be available for web licensing if and when an unused alternate universe becomes available in which to do so. (Unless my official DB decoder ring is malfunctioning. Maybe I'm wrong.)

But then again, the changes that have already taken place have been positive and very unexpected. Back in when, May? June?, any kind of movement seemed out of the question. There was no EOT "Lite", no WOFF, just an impasse.
At least technologically, I do have more choices today than I did just a few months ago.
Things *have* been bleaker.
So I guess we'll pour some tequila on it, and see what happens.

Richard, re. Monotype: I cannot conceive of a situation that would entice me or anybody to choose one of their typefaces - when so many others are available - with that requirement attached.

So how many commercial font licenses have you purchased in the past? What you seem to be forgetting, again, is that you probably are not the market for commercial font licensing, and nor are the vast majority of web authors. The market for commercial font licensing has always been, and will remain, a market of professional designers and their clients. Sure, there will be a minor market for font licensing to amateurs for web use, just as desktop publishing created such a market for print use. But the major market will remain a professional market, and decisions in such a market about what fonts to use are driven by a number of factors that you don't have to worry about, e.g. consistency with existing print media brand identity.

Note also that, contrary to what you write here, Vlad did not say that Monotype ‘will not license to anyone who is not willing to enforce same origin restriction’. What he said was:

Speaking on behalf of Monotype - our license does and will require some kind of protection mechanism be in place for our fonts to be used on the web - either same-origin restrictions or root strings or referrer checking or by another means (e.g. JS) that web authors would find appropriate to satisfy the license conditions.

So same-origin restriction is only one possible mechanism that will satisfy Monotype's license conditions, and the key is that the mechanism will be one that web authors find appropriate. This strikes me as similar to Ascender's 'reasonable measures', recognising that not all web authors have access to the same mechanisms and that some mechanisms are not scaleable, i.e. they might be appropriate to a large company with a dedicated IT department and their own servers but not to Joe Blogger.

Richard, you seem to be wanting fully formed web font delivery systems in place yesterday, and are feeling pessimistic because this isn't the case. This is just plain silly. We're feeling our way, collectively, into new ways of doing business for a new medium. Font makers and vendors are testing the waters in various ways -- Typotheque, Typekit, Kernest, CWT, WOFF -- and, most importantly, looking to see what the browser makers are doing. To me, having watched the type business struggling to follow the lead of software companies for the better part of two decades, I'm actually feeling pretty positive about the degree of upfront engagement from font makers on the web font issue.

JH>To me, having watched the type business struggling to follow the lead of software companies for the better part of two decades,

This a bad joke, right?

Cheers!

I need to give a talk next weekend about Armenian typography, and it will include coverage of delivering non-Latin web pages. Except I'm having trouble wrapping my head around all this... I wish I could've stayed for the webfonts stuff in Mexico City, but I couldn't.

So, assuming there isn't a better Typophile thread to ask this (if there is, please do point me there): what the hell is going on? :-) Do we now have a semi-supported (by whom? and what's it called again?) system that ignores type protection, and another semi-supported system (WOFF, by Firefox only?) that limits copying? What are the chances that one or the other will become sufficiently adopted? Will MS be supporting WOFF? If so, will that kill the other one? Are there any other systems in the game? And does each system require a designer to output separate fonts in that flavor?

I know the answer to this might verge on book-length, so if there's a small set of timely articles I can read to catch up 90% that would still be much appreciated.

hhp

@FontFace, @ Font Face, @Fontface, @ font face… Is there standard nomenclature for this term yet?

And while the players are in the room, perhaps I can draw your attention to a thread I started a while ago on a master list of @font face providers. If you can, please add.

Thank you.

Hrant, I my feeling from reading the discussions with only partial understanding is that the short answer is: 2010. Now the situation is in flux but by the end of next year we likely will have in place the delivery of fonts to web sites that font producers can live with, and on both IE and Firefox.

hrant,

I've covered web fonts extensively on my blog Readable Web.
This will give you listing of all the font related articles.
Key in on:
Web Fonts Panorama - Sept 2009
Jeffrey Zeldman Questions The EOT lite Web Font Format

Many links in my stuff to take you where you need to go to get your head around this.
In a few sentences:
Font-linking is now supported in the latest version of every major browser with the differences amounting mostly to the kind of font file format(s) each supports. (This is aside from the usual implementation differences and bugs which will get smoothed out over time.)
We now await as the latest versions of non-IE browsers propagate out to users. At the present rate - this is a guesstimate based on past behavior- this should be a done deal no later than eighteen months from now on the outside. I'm deliberately being conservative.

Browser breakdown:
IE - EOT and EOTL (EOTL as of late redubbed CWT Compatible Web Type)
Firefox - as of ver 3.5 OTF/TTF
Firefox - as of ver 3.6 OTF/TTF WOFF (see my article)
Opera - as of ver 10 OTF/TTF SVG
Safari - for quite awhile now, OTF/TTF

@christopher dean
Don't know what you mean by an @font-face provider. Please explain.

Very nice - thank you.

I'll be doing a lot of reading then! In the meantime:
Richard, what's your exact definition of "font-linking"?

BTW, if this thing is looking to be resolved in the coming months,
I'm very happy I woke up now! And my talk will sound quite timely. :-)

hhp

@DavidMarshall: "...defining the number of online users as the maximum number of simultaneous requesters of information from a server on which the fonts are installed."

You might want to think hard about that. I'm not sure how you could define "simultaneous" in this context in a way that would work well for you and the client. I would suggest doing it in terms of users per day or per month or some such.

@Richard: I'm assuming an "@font-face provider" is an entity providing font hosting services such as TypeKit, Kernest, FontDeck or Typotheque.

Cheers,

T

@ font face provider = companies like Typekit.

@Christopher > @FontFace, @ Font Face, @Fontface, @ font face… Is there standard nomenclature for this term yet?

The actual syntax for th CSS declaration is @font-face, so you might wish to use this form to describe the feature as well.

"@ font-face" is the official term.

>...with the differences amounting mostly to the kind of font file format(s) each supports.

Incorrect I'm afraid. Formats are nowhere in the formula of difference calculation or protection, and bring nothing but busy work for founders, joy to software janitors and annoyance for server software developers.

The differences in specification, scaling and rendering are the predicted staggering hurdle.

Having watched the non-font software industry struggle with the idea that perfect fonts don't pop out of a free toaster somewhere in never-pay-land, I can tell you I doubt they ever will.

Cheers!

@tphinney and chris dean:

I've seen the term FAAS - Fonts As A Service used by Paul Irish who also writes quite a bit about this.
FAAS is much better (IMHO) than @font-face provider. More accurately describes the relationship. Paul Irish keeps beating me in the name game and I'm pissed. ;)
I think Thomas mentioned them all. Except Typekit is still in Beta (fill out a form to try) and Fontdeck has not, AFAIK, gone operational yet in any way.
Is this what you meant, Chris?

@hrant
Font-linking is, simply, an accurate way of describing the relationship between the web page and the font. Embedding is misleading. The mechanism by which fonts are integrated into a web page is not equivalent to the way fonts are integrated into pdf's or Flash.
There is an actual link within the stylesheet of the web page - stylesheets being written in the language of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) - and so, the web page "calls" the font file using the link the same way it calls, say, an image.
The link contains a source: "src:"
Plus an URL ("http://thissite/fonts/somefont.ttf")
It's a link. And perfectly visible if you go looking for it.
(However, there is no law that says you have to use the font the page contains a link to. So I suppose one could be picky and say font-linking is one thing and the act of actually using the font on the page consitutes "embedding" but that's sophistry, really. Why link if you're not going to use? One implies the other.)
So, font-linking just says it more plainly and accurately.
Straight?

@dberlow
DB>Incorrect I’m afraid.

I'm quite correct. But I respectfully decline to go off on what I consider a tangential debate with you. IMHO you're doing a disservice to colleagues who are just trying to catch up on the basics.
If you want to play Heisenberg to my Newton, go ahead. But we all know how to use a screen magnifier.

>...you’re doing a disservice to colleagues who are just trying to catch up on the basics.

Really.

You stated:
Font-linking is now supported in the latest version of every major browser with the differences amounting mostly to the kind of font file format(s) each supports.

@font-face, (please use the terms), is now supported in the latest version so every major browser and can link to fonts. Significant differences, amounting to the difference between readability and invisibility between two browser's @font-face support, is a single incorrect command or font choice away.

Differences from browser to browser, entirely unrelated to font format, are apparent to anyone working on, as opposed to talking about helping web and type designers.

There is no longer a more basic issue, and I see no tangent, or debate, you supply that yourself nearly every post;)

RF: (However, there is no law that says you have to use the font the page contains a link to. So I suppose one could be picky and say font-linking is one thing and the act of actually using the font on the page consitutes “embedding” but that’s sophistry, really. Why link if you’re not going to use? One implies the other.) ?

Cheers!

@Richard
Monotype has just made it absolutely clear that they will not license to anyone who is not willing to enforce same origin restriction.
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-font/2009OctDec/0111.html

Richard, I hope you do understand that Monotype (and any other font vendor) has the obligation to protect our IP, and that the EULA is the only legal remedy we have. If you read my message carefully (and I would like to thank John Hudson for pointing this out before I had a chance to do it) you would see that I said Monotype would require "some kind of protection mechanism be in place" giving the reasonable choice of a particular tool to web authors.

Based on your comment (quoted above), I also feel I need to clarify what same-origin restriction is, and most importantly what it is not! Same-origin restriction (a.k.a. Cross-Origin Resource Sharing or CORS) is the technology being developed by W3C and implemented by Mozilla Firefox (and, hopefully, soon by all other browsers). It is applied by a browser by default, which means that the font (or any other resource linked in your CSS or HTML page) will only allowed to be used if it comes from the same origin (i.e. both font and HTML page are located on your server). The key here is that you, as a web author, do not have to do *anything* to enforce same-origin restriction, you only need to do *something* if you want to relax this restriction and allow HTML pages from other website link to the fonts hosted on your server.

What I do want to see happened is to have other browsers supporting same-origin restriction sooner rather than later, and this was the essence of my message I tried to convey on W3C font list. You took the message out of context and completely misinterpreted its meaning.

I'd like to make an offer- any time you feel like you need to vent an anger directed to either me personally, or my company - please feel free to contact me directly first - I do think that I could've helped address many of your concerns.

Regards,
Vlad