Re: [apps-discuss] font/* (and draft-freed-media-type-regs)

[David Singer <[e-mail]>]

On Nov 14, 2011, at 17:15 , Martin J. Dürst wrote:

> On 2011/11/15 3:35, David Singer wrote:
>> 
>> On Nov 12, 2011, at 12:25 , Larry Masinter wrote:
>> 
>>> I see no use case for why having font/opentype is any better than application/opentype
>>> 
>>> The only use case I can imagine from looking at
>>> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-singer-font-mime-00
>>> is the possibility of defining common parameters across font data types (in the same way that text/.. has a common charset parameter).
>> 
>> How serious is the first concern "First, the  "application" sub-tree is treated (correctly) with great caution with respect to viruses and other active code."?
> 
> I very much think that having a  font/ top level type is actually a good idea. But I hinted at this before: a type shouldn't be treated as "more safe" just because it says font/, rather than application/. Many font formats contain active code that is executed by the font engine. Several security holes have been found in this area. So I'd actually de-emphasize or remove this point. draft-singer-font-mime-00 also doesn't have a security section, and it of course needs one.
> 

It's very old.  I did it in a way I used to do I-Ds -- matching Word layout with nroff commands embedded as hidden text, so it could be saved as plain text, piped through nroff, and then through that old tool that fiddled with nroff output to make an I-D.

Here it is, it's all yours!

> 
>> (The reason I abandoned the draft was not the difficulty of getting it through, by the way, but because the W3C Timed Text group decided it didn't need it).
> 
> Can you be more specific? E.g., does Timed Text only use one font format? Or does it not contain any field that indicates the format, which makes this "somebody else's problem"?

I think that was it.

> Or some other reason?
> 
> Regards,    Martin.

David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.