The
Web Open Font Format, already backed by
Mozilla and many type foundries was accepted by the World Wide Web Consortium yesterday, marking the first stage in its standardization. The submission included a surprising new sponsor: Microsoft.
Font distribution is a hairy issue. The fundamental problem is that using a particular font within a Web browser requires that font to be available on each and every machine that will visit the page. The font choice obviously has a substantial impact on the appearance of a page, but because the font must be available on each visiting machine, designers are generally forced to stick with the small number of fonts that are widely installed and distributed; the result is that we see a small selection of fonts (such as Arial and Times New Roman) used over and over again. Microsoft has in the past shipped a pack of fonts, the
Core Fonts for the Web to provide a few common options that designers could rely on, but the company stopped distributing them in 2002 after consistent EULA violations.
