Re: [TOOLS-DEVELOPMENT] DRAFT: RFI for fonts

[Henrik Levkowetz <[e-mail]>]

Hi Heather,

On 2014-12-18 16:07, Heather Flanagan (RFC Series Editor) wrote:
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> The draft has been updated to include a bit more intro.  Any other
> suggestions?

Having found a few minutes to think about this, my first thought would
be to suggest the DejaVu font family:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DejaVu_fonts

It seems to me that it fits the requirements rather well.

If this font family is known and has already been considered and found
either lacking or meritous, it would be nice to add data about that to
the RFI.


Best regards,

	Henrik


> 
> ----
> 
> - ---
> Embedded Fonts for the PDF Publication Format for RFCs
> Request for Information
> 
> Description:
> The RFC Editor provides editing, publishing and archiving services for
> the RFC series on behalf of the Internet Engineering Task Force and the
> broader Internet community.  The documents published--Internet
> standards, best common practices, experimental, and informational
> RFCs--need to reflect the expectations of a global community of authors,
> implementors, policy makers, academics, and more (see RFC 6949
> <http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6949.txt>).
> 
> As part of the changes required to meet current expectations, the RFC
> Series Editor announced to the IETF community in 2013 the intent to
> change the format for RFCs from a single, plain-text, ASCII-only format
> to a format based on a canonical XML file with multiple publication
> outputs.  Draft documents describing the requirements include:
> 
> •  Brownlee, N., "SVG Drawings for RFCs: SVG 1.2 RFC", Work in Progress,
> draft-brownlee-svg-rfc-07, July 2014.
> •  Flanagan, H., "RFC Format Framework", Work in Progress,
> draft-flanagan-rfc-framework-01, September 2014.
> •  Flanagan, H., "Requirements for Plain Text RFCs", Work in Progress,
> draft-flanagan-plaintext-01, July 2014.
> •  Flanagan, H., "The Use of Non-ASCII Characters in RFCs", Work in
> Progress, draft-flanagan-nonascii-02, July 2014.
> •  Hansen, T., Masinter, L., and M. Hardy, "PDF for an RFC Series Output
> Document Format", Work in Progress, draft-hansen-rfc-use-of-pdf-02, July
> 2014.
> •  Hildebrand, J. and H. Flanagan, Ed., "HyperText Markup Language
> Request For Comments Format", Work in Progress,
> draft-hildebrand-html-rfc-03, June 2014.
> •  Hoffman, P., "The 'XML2RFC' version 3 Vocabulary", Work in Progress,
> draft-hoffman-xml2rfc-10, September 2014.
> •  Reschke, J., "The 'XML2RFC' version 2 Vocabulary", Work in Progress,
> draft-reschke-xml2rfc-09, June 2014.
> One of those outputs will be PDF/A-3 (see draft-hansen-rfc-use-of-pdf
> <http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-hansen-rfc-use-of-pdf-03.txt>).
> 
> One particular area of concern for the project is around the question of
> what fonts may be used in the PDF/A-3 format.  A requirement for the
> PDF/A-3 format is that the font information for any and all fonts used
> for that document be embedded within the file.  The purpose here is to
> make the file as self-contained and stable as possible.   Given the
> combination of needing to embed font information and allowing the use of
> non-ASCII characters to meet the expectations of our authors, we have a
> challenge with finding the right fonts for our use.,
>  
> Requirements for the fonts themselves include:
> 
> •    Serif and sans-serif fonts should be available (to meet the
> requirement in <draft-hansen-rfc-use-of-pdf> for main text and headings).
> •    A fixed-width font must be available for code, BNF, and any other
> text that requires such a font as an aid in insuring alignment.   
> •    Wide support for Unicode (which may require multiple fonts) is
> necessary to support the change that allows non-ASCII characters in
> RFCs, such as person names in native languages.
> •    Liberal or low-cost license terms.
> 
> 
> This RFI is seeking information on what is available, where gaps exist
> such that a font might need to be acquired with a for-fee license, and
> where a font might need to be designed.
> 
> 
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