>Does anyone know what cunning plans the W3C font service people are up to?
>>From my glance they seem to be looking for a way to distribute (= sell?)
>fonts over the web, while we are looking at how to get a single glyph.
>Anything XML does should fit in with them, I suppose.
>
>Gavin Nicol started a group on this issue a little while back, but I think
>it was derailed by more immediate issues.
>
>Certainly I think a PI system that "shortrefs" user-defined characters
>to Xpointers that index into a font held remotely would be the best way.
>Anyone like that idea?
If you create a gaiji (non-standard "character") and separate the
declaration data of your gaiji from your document, your document will
eventually become undisplayable. The declaration data is very likely to
be lost.
In a Japanese project called Tron, the declaration data is directly embedded
within the document that references to it. Probably, this is the safest
approach. Your document is guaranteed to be displayable.
Moreover, this approach does not lead to serious dispute. If some
mechanism for registering "characters" is made publicly available, I am
sure that some character-policemen will strongly oppose.
In the context of XML, probably we need a mechanism to reference to
some portion of an external parsed entity, which provides a collection of
fonts. This is very close to what you proposed, if not identical.
I do not know if there is a good match between this approach and
WebFont of W3C.
Cheers,
Makoto
Fuji Xerox Information Systems
Tel: +81-44-812-7230 Fax: +81-44-812-7231
E-mail: murata@apsdc.ksp.fujixerox.co.jp