3 ms·

WOFF 1.0: a milestone on W3C's journey of fonts on the web

66 points by hn_acker 3mo ago

Lammy 3mo ago
Article's history section neglects to mention Bitstream's TrueDoc Portable Font Resource format which was supported as a downloadable font standard by Netscape Communicator (4.x series). - Post-first-browser-war version of spec: https://web.archive.org/web/20040407162455/http://www.bitstream.com/categories/developer/truedoc/pfrspec.html https://web.archive.org/web/20040407162455/http://www.bitstr... - Natively supported in Netscape 4: https://web.archive.org/web/19970630083015fw_/http://developer.netscape.com/library/documentation/communicator/dynhtml/webfont4.htm#1032137 https://web.archive.org/web/19970630083015fw_/http://develop... - And was available as an ActiveX Control for IE4: https://web.archive.org/web/19990421092859/http://www.truedoc.com/webpages/FAQs/activex_faq.html https://web.archive.org/web/19990421092859/http://www.truedo... https://web.archive.org/web/19990224045109/http://www.truedoc.com/webpages/intro/howto_ie.htm https://web.archive.org/web/19990224045109/http://www.truedo... And despite being forgotten on Web still found a niche in various broadcast TV standards: “The PFR specification defines the Bitstream portable font resource (PFR), which is a compact, platform-independent format for representing high-quality, scalable outline fonts. Many independent organizations responsible for setting digital TV standards have adopted the PFR font format as their standard font format, including: - ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) - DAVIC (Digital Audio Visual Council) - DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) - DTG (Digital TV Group) - MHP (Multimedia Home Platform) - ISO/IEC 16500-6:1999 - OCAP (OpenCable Application Platform)” e: The linked 2022 retrospective does mention it in passing, but considering it shipped natively-supported in the #1 browser of the era I think it deserves to not be buried :) https://www.w3.org/TR/2022/NOTE-font-rationale-20220414/ https://www.w3.org/TR/2022/NOTE-font-rationale-20220414/
- 1bpp 3mo ago
  I wonder if this is because of one broadcast character generator or something deciding to use it and people cloning them, or just being the best choice at the time? I've never heard of PFR and find those kinds of parallel-universe standards interesting
altern8 3mo ago
Why is the new logo a stamp you find on some cheese wheels, like Parmigiano
interstingstuff 3mo ago
I just added WOFF2 fonts today to my page
nicoburns 3mo ago
WOFF2 is pretty cool. I recently ported the C++ woff2 library (https://github.com/google/woff2 https://github.com/google/woff2 - as used by Chrome, Firefox) to Rust (https://github.com/nicoburns/wuff https://github.com/nicoburns/wuff), and it turn out WOFF2 has a bunch of custom font-specific compression algorithms. WOFF1 is kinda boring from a technical perspective: it's just gzip in a font container.
wittyurchin 3mo ago
[flagged]

66 points by hn_acker 3mo ago

Lammy 3mo ago

Article's history section neglects to mention Bitstream's TrueDoc Portable Font Resource format which was supported as a downloadable font standard by Netscape Communicator (4.x series). - Post-first-browser-war version of spec: https://web.archive.org/web/20040407162455/http://www.bitstream.com/categories/developer/truedoc/pfrspec.html https://web.archive.org/web/20040407162455/http://www.bitstr... - Natively supported in Netscape 4: https://web.archive.org/web/19970630083015fw_/http://developer.netscape.com/library/documentation/communicator/dynhtml/webfont4.htm#1032137 https://web.archive.org/web/19970630083015fw_/http://develop... - And was available as an ActiveX Control for IE4: https://web.archive.org/web/19990421092859/http://www.truedoc.com/webpages/FAQs/activex_faq.html https://web.archive.org/web/19990421092859/http://www.truedo... https://web.archive.org/web/19990224045109/http://www.truedoc.com/webpages/intro/howto_ie.htm https://web.archive.org/web/19990224045109/http://www.truedo... And despite being forgotten on Web still found a niche in various broadcast TV standards: “The PFR specification defines the Bitstream portable font resource (PFR), which is a compact, platform-independent format for representing high-quality, scalable outline fonts. Many independent organizations responsible for setting digital TV standards have adopted the PFR font format as their standard font format, including: - ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) - DAVIC (Digital Audio Visual Council) - DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) - DTG (Digital TV Group) - MHP (Multimedia Home Platform) - ISO/IEC 16500-6:1999 - OCAP (OpenCable Application Platform)” e: The linked 2022 retrospective does mention it in passing, but considering it shipped natively-supported in the #1 browser of the era I think it deserves to not be buried :) https://www.w3.org/TR/2022/NOTE-font-rationale-20220414/ https://www.w3.org/TR/2022/NOTE-font-rationale-20220414/

1bpp 3mo ago
I wonder if this is because of one broadcast character generator or something deciding to use it and people cloning them, or just being the best choice at the time? I've never heard of PFR and find those kinds of parallel-universe standards interesting

altern8 3mo ago

Why is the new logo a stamp you find on some cheese wheels, like Parmigiano

interstingstuff 3mo ago

I just added WOFF2 fonts today to my page

nicoburns 3mo ago

WOFF2 is pretty cool. I recently ported the C++ woff2 library (https://github.com/google/woff2 https://github.com/google/woff2 - as used by Chrome, Firefox) to Rust (https://github.com/nicoburns/wuff https://github.com/nicoburns/wuff), and it turn out WOFF2 has a bunch of custom font-specific compression algorithms. WOFF1 is kinda boring from a technical perspective: it's just gzip in a font container.

wittyurchin 3mo ago

[flagged]