Microsoft, Adobe, and Agfa support W3C's font standard proposal

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has released a draft proposal for standardizing the use of fonts on the Web that has the backing of major font vendors such as Adobe, Agfa, and Microsoft.

This new specification extends the existing Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) spec by adding the following capabilities:

• Intelligent font selection based on the fonts that are available on the user's computer.
• Synthesis of replacement fonts when there isn't a suitable one available.
• Automatic font download over the Web.

The CSS font model will be extended by adding new font descriptors that allow Web developers to include information about fonts--including a download URL--into style sheets