[webkit-help] Font resources management in Safari on Mac

[Filip Likavčan]

Hi, Im speaking on behalf of the typefoundry Typotheque
(www.typotheque.com) which provides service for serving custom fonts
for webpages: http://www.typotheque.com/webfonts

Brief description of the service: A user registers on the site, buys
some of the fonts and then uses it on his/her webpage. After he/she
configures his/her account he/she gets one simple URL of a CSS file
with font-face definitions for chosen fonts. This URL never changes.
Inside every font-face definition there is URL of a font file. This
URL changes with every request for CSS file.

We have this problem with Safari browser running on Mac OS:

When Safari loads a page which uses a webfont everything is fine.
Texts are rendered with the appropriate fonts. The problem occurs when
user hits back/forward button. In this case (sometimes) text are not
rendered with chosen webfonts. We noticed that Safari tries to render
whole page from some internal cache and its ignoring HTTP headers
which explicitly says to not cache fonts resources. We've tried to
randomize CSS url with javascript and include CSS with
document.write-ing the <link> element, overide onunload handler, but
nothing seems to help. Also reloading the page by clicking reload
button causes the same rendering inconsistency. We think that
something is wrong with resources management (or maybe just fonts
resources mngmnt) in Safari on Mac. We didnt see these problems in
Safari on Windows.

Sincerely
Filip Likavcan