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There are isolated problems with current patches, but they are well-known and documented on this site. |
They way I understand it, when directing fonts while coding a web page, the called for font must reside on the viewer’s system or it will fall back to a default font.
Is there a way to actually embed a font as one would a sound or flash file so the viewer sees the particular font as intended for the purpose of a particular presentation or purpose?
Yep.
It’s called using graphics 
.
Font downloading (I believe) is otherwise controlled in IE’s security set-up. If you attempt to force a font download, and the user has set font downloads to Disable, they may end up with a blank screen.
Personally, I have font downloading disabled as I find most other web “designers” choice of font varies between illegible and hideous. 
All kiddin’ aside, I do often use graphics to use a custom font I want presented in the page. But often I would like to use a paragraph or paragraphs of matching text. It seems that there would be a way to present the font as one would any other element of a web page as intended. If not, then perhaps this is an opportunity to develop coding or a means to accomplish this. 
Unfortunately, you can’t have that much control when creating a web page. Makin’ web pages is a give and take. As Leif mentioned, many users have the function turned off in I.E. I don’t know if other browsers support this. I don’t know if there’s a standard. I really haven’t heard of it. Maybe someone else can pipe in on this. I wouldn’t be suprised if there are legal issues with this too. Who pays for the font? 
If you really want more control over the presentation, mabye Adobe Acrobat, or as Leif mentioned, images.
Bruce, you’ve read the other posts on the pitfalls of font downloading, I’m sure. A good practice that you may want to put to use is to specify multiple font names in the style sheet. Take a look at the following example from a style sheet:
body, p, table, td, tr, ol, ul {
color: #FFFFFF;
font-family: tahoma, verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 10pt;
This specifies a choice of fonts. Helvetica and sans-serif are there for non-Windows operating systems that may not have the first three fonts installed. If not specified the page will use the browser’s defined default font. You can specify whatever fonts you choose here, and I don’t believe there’s a limit, but you are always going to have to contend with the possibility that a font you prefer isn’t there. You could add a linmk somewhere that takes you to a “page viewing recommendations” section where you provide the fonts in a ZIP for downloading, as the Lounge does. Many page designers will design the content to fit a certain resolution as well – possibly too lazy to test other permutations of the page. 
Remember – HTML was designed to control the structure of documents, and CSS was later added to help control the appearance – formatting is not a primary goal of HTML documents.
You are right about the purpose of structure in HTML.
I do use the font variables to specify fonts in style or font tags where appropriate, but I suppose I am just thinking out loud here a little outside of the box here with a new concept (if it is in fact even new) 
With the plethora of fonts available out there, it is unlikely that many folks have fonts installed outside of the “standard” fonts commonly included with OS root fonts & Office packs. Providing fonts to download to view a page doesn’t strike me as friendly in enjoying rich web content & based on human nature I am making the assumption folks wouldn’t want to bother having to go through a another step or two to do that.
What I am suggesting is handling a font as an element of design & presentation like a graphic element. Creating font graphics works well for headers, titles, or short sentences, but beyond that is cumbersome & file bloating. For example, if I have a web page that uses a custom font called CandyCane, most assuredly no one will have it installed. The intention would be to fashion a means to have the custom font embedded/installed/loaded/streamed/whatever as per the design of the page or site without having to download it somewhere and have it presented as are the images on a page, for example, as does our buddy Lex in the corner up there. I don’t have to download him somewhere to view him, it just loads.
I guess I am conceptualizing a way to treat specific fonts as a graphic element without having to turn it into a graphic. Does this make sense? 
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Providing fonts to download to view a page doesn’t strike me as friendly in enjoying rich web content & based on human nature I am making the assumption folks wouldn’t want to bother having to go through a another step or two to do that.
[/indent]That’s a true statement. But you can’t force feed them fonts either so providing those so inclined is really about the only option you have. This is a caveat of page design. If you just gotta have that one font to make the page look right, you need to provide your own mechanism for obtaining it, or make allowances in your page design for those that either don’t have or won’t download said typeface.
[indent]
What I am suggesting is handling a font as an element of design presentation like a graphic element.
[/indent]Nothing that any of us can do about that….but you could always submit that idea to the W3C. What you’re saying makes perfect sense to me, but it just isn’t the way things currently work. 
Personally, I’m kind of glad too, because it’s a few more KB to download along with the other code that makes up a page, and I sure don’t trust Microsoft to implement this without opening up some serious security hole. Disguise a script as a FON or TTF file, and you’re 
. 
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