[mpeg-OTspec] RE: font media types

[Thomas Phinney]

John's suggestion seems much more useful and unambiguous, to me.

T

On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 11:07 AM, John Hudson <john at tiro.ca> wrote:

>
>
> Vladimir wrote:
>
> > We can also consider changing the proposed
> > media types, e.g. to be more specific and use font-ttf, font-cff and
> > font-otf for the purposes outlined above.
>
> If the distinction is to be based on outline type, then I think
> 'font-ttf' and 'font-cff' is much preferable to using 'font-otf' for the
> latter. The only reason .otf is not typically used as a file extension
> for TrueType fonts is so that the latter are backwards compatible with
> older Windows systems that do not recognise .otf; this is obviously less
> of a practical concern than it was in 1998, and now persists mostly as
> convention. I have, however, seen some TrueType fonts with an .otf
> extension.
>
> OTF stands for OpenType Font, not PostScript OpenType Font, and the
> first item in the OpenType catechism is that an OpenType font may
> contain either TrueType or PostScript outlines. Hence, I think it is
> misleading or at least confusing to identify 'font-otf' with PostScript
> outlines.
>
> I also wonder about using either 'font-off' or 'font-otf' to indicate an
> unknown outline type: the former because OFF is not a widely used or
> recognised abbreviation -- the Open Font Format being reasonably seen as
> a particular publication of the OpenType Font specification --, and the
> latter because of potential confusion in the minds of those who, due to
> convention, associate .otf with PostScript outlines.
>
> I wonder if there might be grounds for a generic 'font-sfnt' MIME type,
> which would not only express the desired agnosticism regarding outline
> type, but would also be useful for fonts containing non-OTL layout tables.
>
> So we might have:
>
> application/font-ttf
> application/font-cff
> application/font-sfnt
>
> JH
>
> --
>
> Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com
> Gulf Islands, BC tiro at tiro.com
>
> A pilgrimage is a journey undertaken in the
> light of a story. -- Paul Elie
>
>  
>



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