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  • Lammy 1 hours

    Article's history section neglects to mention Bitstream's TrueDoc Portable Font Resource format which was supported as a downloadable font standard by Netscape Communicator (4.x series).

    - Post-first-browser-war version of spec: https://web.archive.org/web/20040407162455/http://www.bitstr...

    - Natively supported in Netscape 4: https://web.archive.org/web/19970630083015fw_/http://develop...

    - And was available as an ActiveX Control for IE4: https://web.archive.org/web/19990421092859/http://www.truedo... https://web.archive.org/web/19990224045109/http://www.truedo...

    And despite being forgotten on Web still found a niche in various broadcast TV standards:

    “The PFR specification defines the Bitstream portable font resource (PFR), which is a compact, platform-independent format for representing high-quality, scalable outline fonts. Many independent organizations responsible for setting digital TV standards have adopted the PFR font format as their standard font format, including:

    - ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee)

    - DAVIC (Digital Audio Visual Council)

    - DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting)

    - DTG (Digital TV Group)

    - MHP (Multimedia Home Platform)

    - ISO/IEC 16500-6:1999

    - OCAP (OpenCable Application Platform)”

    e: The linked 2022 retrospective does mention it in passing, but considering it shipped natively-supported in the #1 browser of the era I think it deserves to not be buried :) https://www.w3.org/TR/2022/NOTE-font-rationale-20220414/