When I started working with the excellent gae-init framework in the last quarter of 2013, I noticed some “Could not guess mimetype warnings for .ttf files” warnings/notifications while uploading my test application to the Google App Engine (GAE) servers.
Looking around, I found that it is possible to specify the mime type for these kind of files. However, due to lacking standardization, there are different mime type options suggested for these TrueType Font (.ttf) files.
Problem solved, pick one and be happy… but I stumbled on a hint that using “font/ttf” might in fact reduce bandwidth usage (for the app owner) and decrease load times (for users).
Ended up using wireshark and ab to figure out what was going on and whether there was value in that claim. For some steps along the way, see gae-init/issues/53 and gae-init/pull/54
Now, asked whether it was still valid, I decided to turn my notes into something anyone can repeat and test at will: therefore please welcome my new and exciting test-ttf-on-gae project on GitHub. Which actually just is the Python / Flask based example of Google for GAE, with a modified app.yaml plus a very detailed setup and test procedure for anyone to start testing.