Understanding Embedded Fonts - Weft And Warp (
Page 4 of 4 )
If you prefer doing
things the Microsoft way, you can use WEFT to build embedded font files which
are natively supported on Internet Explorer 4.x and above.
The first time
you install WEFT, it will scan your system and build a list of all available
fonts; these fonts are then displayed to you in a neat table with icons
indicating whether or not they can be embedded into your Web page (many font
authors do not permit their fonts to be embedded, preferring instead to charge
users for the privilege). Once the database has been built, WEFT will ask you
for a list of HTML pages to scan, and will build a list of all the fonts used in
those pages.
At this point, you can select a subset of glyphs to be
encoded into the embedded font file (identified with the .eot extension), and
have WEFT generate the font files for you. Your decision on which glyphs to
encode (because more glyphs means a larger file) should be based on the extent
to which you plan to use the font; if you're using it for only a single line of
text, it makes more sense to encode only a few specific
characters.
WEFT's documentation states that the program can also edit
your HTML files to include the HTML code necessary to get the font files to
work; however, my experience was that the program ended up corrupting the HTML
file instead. It's advisable to copy the code from WEFT's template, and paste it
into your Web documents yourself.
Here's what a typical WEFT-enabled page
looks like:
<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
<!-- /* $WEFT -- Created by: me (me@me.co.m) on 19-10-00 -- */
@font-face {
font-family: Staccato222 BT;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: normal;
src: url(http://www.melonfire.com/staccat0.eot);
}
-->
</style>
</head>
<body>
<font face="Staccato222 BT" size="+1">Am I looking good today or
what?</font>
</body>
</html>
The CSS rule above will use the font located at the
URL "http://www.melonfire.com/staccat0.eot" to render the characters on the
page. Caveat: don't expect this to work in Netscape's browser.
Of the two
approaches above, the TrueDoc format is preferable at the current time, since it
allows users of either browser to view your embedded fonts correctly - a problem
the OpenType format is yet to address. The WEFT tool is still under development,
though, so keep checking the Microsoft Web site at
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/
for updates on this issue.
Till next time...stay healthy!
This article copyright Melonfire 2000. All rights reserved.
