Felipe Sanches wrote:
SVG1.1 spec, on session 20:
The purpose of SVG fonts is to allow for delivery of glyph outlines in
display-only environments. SVG fonts that accompany Web pages must be supported only in browsing and viewing situations. Graphics editing applications or file translation tools must not attempt to convert SVG fonts into system fonts. The intent is that SVG files be interchangeable between two content creators, but not the SVG fonts that might accompany these SVG files. *Instead, each content creator will need to license the given font before being able to successfully edit the SVG file.* The font-face-namehttp://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/fonts.html#FontFaceNameElementelement indicates the name of licensed font to use for editing.
Am I getting confused or is this part of the spec really promoting the use of DRM techniques for SVG Fonts?
I think it means that: 1. SVG fonts are used to enable rendering of SVG images that contain a font that isn't on your system. 2. Because some fonts are copyrighted, if you have licensed i.e. a TTF font, you should be able to convert it into an SVG font to allow other people to see it on your web page, however others should not be able to take your generated SVG font and recreate your licensed TTF font from it. 3. I also think it means that editing an SVG image that contains SVG fonts created from licensed fonts should be impossible unless the original TTF font is present in your system. 4. Because the SVG font has the full information required to display a glyph, it means that respecting those restrictions is up to the goodwill of developers.
I think this basically means that if an SVG font was created from a licensed font, it's supposed to be "read-only", as well as any document that uses it, and converting such an SVG font to a system-readable font should be impossible. I have the impression that this paragraph was put in to appease font vendors (keep in mind that this spec was originally created by Adobe). It doesn't advocate DRM in its regular sense, rather something like a "please do not steal" sign. I think that an SVG font to TTF converter could comply with this part of the specification, provided it refused to work on SVG fonts derived from copyrighted fonts.