The debate around the use of fonts in web design is once again emerging with vigour. A proposal for a fonts working group is now under discussion at the W3C. You can read Jeffrey Zeldman’s account of the meeting here.

It’s worth reading the minutes of the initial meeting which was held on Thursday 23 October. They include a condensed account of the discussion between a small but an interesting sample of individuals from the font industry which included Bitstream, Microsoft and Monotype as well as big internet companies such as Opera and Mozilla.

The meeting included a discussion of Microsoft’s EOT (Embedded OpenType) versus raw fonts, which I have posted about before here. Bert Bos, style activity lead and co-creator of CSS, summarised the relevant pros and cons discussed. These are the major concerns:

1. CSS provides a mechanism for embedding real fonts on your website, and some browsers support it, but its use probably violates your licensing agreement with the type foundry, and may also cause security problems on an end-user’s computer.

2. Microsoft’s EOT (based on the same standard CSS mechanism) works harder to avoid violating your licensing agreement, and has long worked in Internet Explorer, but is not supported in other browsers, is not foolproof vis-a-vis type foundry licensing rules, and may also cause PC security problems.

The proposed fonts working group hopes to navigate the technical and business problems of providing real fonts on the web but whatever proposal or solution it comes up with will be fraught will controversy. The concerns of small foundries and individual type designers versus the really big companies such as Adobe and Microsoft will undoubtedly clash. However, in light of what has happened with the music and movie industries, and the rampant pirating of fonts that currently exists, is it realistic to think a DRM model will work? From the perspective of web designers, developers and users, the freedom to use any font will definitely envigorate (for better and worse) the presentation of content on the web. Good design and typography will emerge where it always does and mediocre tat will continue to flourish in parallel. That’s the beauty of democracy on the web.

On a serious note though, it should focus designers to think critically about which fonts are really suitable for screen and why? And in turn, hopefully lead to a deeper understanding of the screen typography and its related design principles.