Font streaming
Sunday, July 19th, 2009Update: Now the project is on google code
A promise is a promise 
Now you can download sources of my library handling progressive download of fonts for Flash.
I clean up all to separate different works.
1. Waterfall demo
Main demo proof of concept. Demonstrate the system with non embed fonts where chars are loaded when them entered. Also give an example to the usage with Flex on custom components (through Text.fontContext)
2. Font cache generator
An AS3 Command line executable (made with redtamarin) allow quickly generate fonts cache. A binary file format used to serve fast small amount of font data (optionaly a format used to storage data).
Use it to add more supported fonts for build in test (Waterfall demo). For generate font cache files simply use console: fcgen embed_fonts.swf (or use --help for display help), put generated files (by default *.foncache) in fontcache folder and update fontlist.xml
This contains also 2 others version, an old version in AS3/SWF by passing the SWF file by clicking on stage first and save the result by click second, and an not working flex alternative (read only some information about the SWF file passing through the button “open”).
3. SWF template base
Not realy important but used for generated the template used in library for generate dynamically SWF file contain fonts data.
Here miss an other part used to modify the SWF template for keep only needed informations (remove debug, metadata …)
And finally an example to embed font with Flex SDK.
Notice
I’m currently work on a big multilingual project which use it. But the server get in trouble (we suppose) with PHP when handling huge file like for Arial Unicode MS for CJK texts. We use a (temporary ?) solution by caching requested files and serve again for same requests. This not include in sources.
Beyond, is hard to get styles applied on HTML text. This for what, I had create a class handling HTML text and parsing it to know used text/fonts, improve HTML support by TextField (by some hack and HTML transformations). Is not yet include in souces.
- Can have memory impact or CPU time when intensive usage for large range of chars (need be more tested)
- Not all font information supported, but maybe no real impact (Small text ? and language code ? )
- Server performance (PHP parsing and generating are time consumer) (need enhance by optimizing the script or use an other language like C/C++ or use a DB for stocking gyphs data instead a unique file)
- Only TextField can use it, not supported by new Flash 10 TextEngine, it use an other way to embed font (CFF Fonts) (need support DefineFont4 tag)
- The font embedded by Flash are cleaner than Flex SDK, but Flash CS3 allow generate fake italic and bold whereas Flash CS4 allow used real font styles (Light, Condensed, Heavy …)
No licence explicitly declared but sure i think as GPL, no AS3 package, more examples, SVN, dedicated page, real name, logo … this will come.
