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Font obfuscation in PWP
Is there still a requirement to obfuscate embedded fonts in a PWP container? If yes, should it be treated at the container level (e.g. OCF-lite) or at the WP level?
References:
- OCF 3.2 section 5.
- Font Embedding and Font Obfuscation/Mangling (EPUB Secrets, 2011)
Remarks:
- There is no such thing as obfuscated fonts on the Web.
- Many people mix font obfuscation with DRM and DRM is evil at W3C.
- Let's remember that for specific use cases not treated by PWP, EPUB 3 will be there ... forever.
- There a two methods for obfuscating fonts in EPUB, from Adobe and IDPF (and treating them is quite a pain for developers of packaging tools and Reading Systems).
- The IDPF method relies on a unique identifier for the publication. The unique_identifier in the EPUB .opf must be replaced by the identifier found in the WP manifest, therefore there is a close relationship between WP parsing and font obfuscation.
In the first draft of "OCF-lite" the section about font obfuscation is removed. This threat should help decide what is to be done on this front.
On Thu, Dec 27, 2018 at 11:58 AM L. Le Meur [email protected] wrote:
Is there still a requirement to obfuscate embedded fonts in a PWP container?
That's a really good question!
- There is no such thing as obfuscated fonts on the Web.
Because there is no packaging on the web...
However, (commercial) web font vendors may use various licensing techniques that are somewhat equivalent. One should also consider that these may not be compatible with packaging either - eg. not all web fonts can be (legally) used in an "off the web" scenario.
In the first draft of "OCF-lite" the section about font obfuscation is removed. This threat should help decide what is to be done on this front.
I think that's OK - but we well need a section on Fonts in either the PWP or the OCF-lite doc.
Should we add a section of Fonts in the LPF specification? What could we state there? that fonts obfuscation is not allowed in conforming Packages?
I don't think we should have a section specific to fonts. Fonts are just another web resource.
This may well become an issue, but as first application of LCF is for audiobooks, perhaps don't worry about it for now.
