What are the implications and cosiderations if I use a brotli tool to compress, then decompress a font file, first to WOFF2, then back to ttf?
My gained advantage is obvious. You just look at the files.
Licenses are unharmed by the proces AFAIS. Is there anything else that could prevent me from taking this approach? I have not understood if and how glyphs are changed in the process. So my idea does not seem to have any bad sides (that's odd).
However, let me state (again) that the sizes of font-files are of not much influence on the loading speed, when the right techniques are used. For the time being, I am merely “challenged” by the concepts.
TIA.
Edits: false directions.
[woff2/ttf] Round trip brotli compress & uncompress
- Michael Uplawski
- Posts: 215
- Joined: Thu Dec 11, 2014 11:43 pm
- Location: Canton Magny, Normandy
[woff2/ttf] Round trip brotli compress & uncompress
“There are flatworlders all around the globe.” (unknown author)
“If we go now, nature may stand a chance.” (known author)
“If we go now, nature may stand a chance.” (known author)
Re: [woff2/ttf] Round trip brotli compress & uncompress
A tool like FontForge would be able to tell you that since it logs all issues and errors contained on the font file and it provides the required tools to fix most, if not all issues. I could also be used to do the conversion. Just keep in mind that the font licencie must allow you to manipulate the file in such a way
- Michael Uplawski
- Posts: 215
- Joined: Thu Dec 11, 2014 11:43 pm
- Location: Canton Magny, Normandy
Re: [woff2/ttf] Round trip brotli compress & uncompress
Thank you.lgsl wrote: Thu Mar 05, 2026 3:34 pm A tool like FontForge would be able to tell you that since it logs all issues and errors contained on the font file and it provides the required tools to fix most, if not all issues. I could also be used to do the conversion. Just keep in mind that the font licencie must allow you to manipulate the file in such a way
I have forgotten FontForge... Although I consider it a powerful tool and have not yet tried your suggestion, I am a little afraid of FontForge. I mean: understanding the WOFF format(s), their structure, and using brotli might spare me the confrontation with that monster... however. I will try FontForge.
For the time being, online converters and the woff-tools available for Debian make me gain 100K on a TrueType font. There are two things to retain here:
1.) 100K is not much on the Web. Almost nothing compared to the other resources that people are used to share, nowadays.
2.) There “appears to be” some disposable stuff transferred with the font-files, irrespective of their file extension.
As regards your concerns for the license.., I left your post intact in the quote above, because this is part of the topic. But I use a lot of OFL Fonts, otherwise fonts that are explicitly allowed for embedding. For FertigoPro I have the authorization by the font author himself, although I found later that the Exljbris EULA already allows embedding of the one font style I use.
When you look at fonts like Lato or the Libertine family.., I wonder what people do, nowadays and why?
“There are flatworlders all around the globe.” (unknown author)
“If we go now, nature may stand a chance.” (known author)
“If we go now, nature may stand a chance.” (known author)