The W3C Fonts Working Group
If you’re not already familiar with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), they are one of the major organizations that define web standards—the technical specifications that describe all aspects of the world wide web. These specifications are meant to, in theory, insure interoperability.
Interoperability is at the center of the web fonts debate. We need a web font solution that will work across platforms and browsers. It makes sense then that the W3C is at the center of this debate.
It is important to note that it is not the responsibility of the W3C to dictate what browsers will and will not support. The W3C is not a government body, they don’t make rules that must be followed—they can’t force browsers to support a particular web font implementation. What they do is document agreed upon standards. Sometimes they must facilitate communication among the interested parties so that they can arrive at an agreed upon standard. When this communication is necessary a W3C Working Group is formed and decisions are made by consensus.
In march of this year a Fonts Working Group Charter draft was posted on the W3C website:
The mission of the Fonts Working Group, part of the Fonts Activity, is to allow wider use of fonts on the Web by identifying a font format that can be supported by all user agents, balancing font vendor concerns with the needs of authors and users and the simplicity of implementation.
It’s unclear to me if the Fonts Working Group has been officially formed or not but the charter states that the group conducts its work on the public mailing list www-font@w3.org which has been very active in the last few months. In addition to the debate around the formats already discussed in this series a few new proposals have been added to the pot:
- EOT Lite
- .webfont
- .screenfonts
- ZOT
- WebOTF
These proposals are all very interesting but also in flux. There’s even a debate over the official names of these proposed formats.
I remain hopeful that the W3C Fonts Working Group will come up with some good solutions. In the meantime, my next post will focus on the options we have today and how we can use fonts now. I promise it will be less theoretical and more practical. Now that you have the background on where web fonts are headed you will be better prepared to understand our current methods.
The Web Fonts Series
- Part 1: An Overview of Font Embedding, Font Linking, & the Current State of Fonts on the Web
- Part 2: Stakeholders & Browser Support
- Part 3: Technical Hurdles
- Part 4: The W3C Fonts Working Group
- Part 5: Fonts Now!
Tags: web-fonts