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

["Heather Flanagan (RFC Series Editor)" <[e-mail]>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hello all,

The draft has been updated to include a bit more intro.  Any other
suggestions?

- ----

- - ---
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.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2
Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJUku26AAoJEER/xjINbZoGC7IH/23zFEZ/odJdWJTE1kzqguGC
xsgftdDtjoc03leIH5Hz8QJ+90MdRzc6SNSvoD0wTzlF0i3CDxff1kExQStLwQvr
mGzEEeUrNX88h2adNP0VaLpJbdK64Cx1m3Wrg1o7t0Cv2pz4/K9T/oxgo41jjIMV
2cXFD46Yj79NjVBPvg8I8RYPx0PVQ8ju6TjrWsn+y3yk492aMn96wBMmmK82szJs
L0UThemS5JAYF6W7gvsMteib6VRjK5vS15npTB+m6Ex3sNixNz1sx+VBz8+cFXpq
ENSu1wIrJF3f7hxTYkbUVx2AXilq8UUAJo3470kYb9r2RcwkdIfm4xdsLVKSD3A=
=ucxU
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----