Cross-browser embedded font in svg image

Question

The title is ambiguous; let me clarify: I have an svg image which includes a text I want rendered with a custom font.

However, there seem to be new issues that do no

Answer 1

I ended up using this:

Support:

+------------+--------+-------+-------+-----------+
|            | Win XP | Win 7 | iOS 6 | OS X 10.9 |
+------------+--------+-------+-------+-----------+
| IE  8      |     no |    no |       |           |
| IE  9      |        |   yes |       |           |
| IE 10      |        |   yes |       |           |
| IE 11      |        |   yes |       |           |
| Safari 4   |        |   yes |       |           |
| Safari 5.0 |        |   yes |       |           |
| Safari 5.1 |        |    no |       |           |
| Safari 7   |        |    no |       |       yes |
| Safari iOS |        |       |   yes |           |
| FF  3.6    |     no |    no |       |           |
| FF  4      |    yes |   yes |       |           |
| FF 27      |    yes |   yes |       |       yes |
| Chrome 14  |    yes |   yes |       |           |
| Chrome 33  |    yes |   yes |       |       yes |
| Opera 10.6 |    yes |   yes |       |           |
| Opera 19   |    yes |       |       |           |
+------------+--------+-------+-------+-----------+

Per http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combined-ww-monthly-201310-201312-bar this amounts for overall support of somewhere around 85 %.

The only really bothering thing is that Safari 5.1 renders NO text at all like this. I had to make a Safari only fallback in the css declaration:

/* Win Safari fallback */
@media screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio:0) { 
    /* Safari only */
    ::i-block-chrome,text {
        font-family: 'Verdana';
    }
}

Anyway, embedding the font just feels wrong as the files are huge.