Q: webfonts:

[Alec Leamas]

On 05/03/2013 03:51 PM, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> Le Lun 29 avril 2013 11:22, Alec Leamas a écrit :
>
>> The reply makes me feel a little more confused, on a higher level. How
>> does that reply translate to the packaging of a web application with
>> some bundled webfonts ? "scratching my head".
> That means that you usually do not need a special format webfont. Serving
> the system ttf/otf will work just as well, except for ie (and if your
> webapp includes any semi-advanced js it won't work well in ie anyway). Non
> ttf/otf webfont formats exist primarily to expose to the browser a file
> that can't be used directly in another app (DRMish).
OK, thanks for explanation!

Still hesitating a here: if upstream has decided to support the widest 
possible set of browsers (including IE):  should we really just drop the 
formats required by IE?  From a user perspective, I don't really follow 
this although I do understand your line of reasoning.

> To serve the system ttf/otf font you 'just' need to expose
> /usr/share/fonts/whatever in your url space (for example, using apache
> alias directives + the usual file permission section)
>
> If you don't want to write web server configuration you will need to write
> complex rpm rules to copy at build or install time system fonts in your
> webapp directory, and version-lock your package with the system font
> packages to propagate changes in those packages in your webapp package. I
> doubt it will much easier than writing web server config rules.
Web configuration is not  that that scary, indeed ;). And here is an 
obvious possibility  to package this  once and for all in a separate 
package  like  apache-fonts-access exposing the complete font tree, I guess.

>> Note that in my case the "fonts" are just just images and icons, which
>> makes the normal font fallback mechanisms useless.
> So you think. All fonts are "just images and icons"
>
I'm truly a font newbie. That said, is there really a meaningful 
fallback for a font such as sozial 
(https://github.com/adamstac/zocial)?  I. e., is there a reasonable 
fallback for a Facebook button?


--alec