w3c / w3c/clreq

Webfonts are too large

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doc:clreq gap i:fonts l:zh p:advanced s:hani
Dominant language
HTML
Stars
809
Forks
66
Avg merge
19m
Merged PRs (30d)
1

Description

This issue is applicable to Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Most simple alphabetic languages are currently well served by existing Web font delivery methods. However, the Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) group of languages is currently unable to use Webfonts due to the very large file sizes. A substantial reduction in file size is needed, without a significant increase in page load times caused by multiple network requests.

Specs

IFT: this specification defines methods to incrementally transfer fonts from server to client.

Preinstalled Fonts and User-Installed Fonts in css-fonts: issue 5421 Open.

Priority

Because most operating systems have preinstalled CJK fonts, CJK text can be rendered properly, it's just the fonts cannot be freely selected, so this is prioritised as an advanced issue.

Action taken

BlinkWebkitGecko

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reviewing the linked IFT specification and the css-fonts issue 5421, then compare the linked Blink, WebKit, and Gecko actions. Done would require an agreed approach that substantially reduces CJK webfont size without significantly increasing page-load time from extra requests.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
css
Domain
internationalization
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
20/100

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