Re: CJK Letters some questions so I can compute font family sizes.

First, Thank You Christophe

That is what I needed. I will insert vertical into my line length algorithm
for computing average character width. It is really nice to have an
expected result before I start.

I cannot do the same statistical analysis with Chinese, but if my line
length method for computing actual character size (as opposed to font size)
then I can give a method for native speakers to define reasonable variance.
For example, in Latin sets, 1.25 is reasonable variance. This was obtained
by statistical analysis together with my own common sense l derived from
knowing Latin based languages.

The numbers may vary by language, but we can give the internationalization
an algorithm plus a heuristic for choosing the variance for any language.

Thanks again,

Wayne





On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 12:18 PM, John Foliot <john.foliot@deque.com> wrote:

> Hi Christophe,
>
> Thanks again for a detailed and well researched response. There is a
> wealth of information here.
>
> Wayne, as you are continuing your measurement calculations, have you also
> taken into account Ruby content (https://www.w3.org/TR/ruby/)? I'm not
> sure how this will impact your experiments, but it strikes me there *may*
> be an issue, or at a minimum, the need for some kind of exception to
> address Ruby text, which by design is intended to be smaller than the "base
> font".
>
> <ruby>
>   <rb>WWW</rb>
>   <rt>World Wide Web</rt>
> </ruby>
>
> *Figure 1.4*: Example of simple ruby markup
>
> This may be rendered as follows:
>
> [image: At the bottom left, three large letters reading 'WWW'. On top of
> them, in smaller letters, the text 'World Wide Web'. To the right, arrows
> and text saying 'ruby base' (bottom) and 'ruby text' (top).]
>
> *Figure 1.5*: Example of rendering for simple ruby markup in Figure 1.4
> <https://www.w3.org/TR/ruby/#fig1.4>
> ​(source: https://www.w3.org/TR/ruby/#simple-ruby1)
>
> JF
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 11:50 AM, Christophe Strobbe <
> strobbe@hdm-stuttgart.de> wrote:
>
>> Hi Wayne,
>>
>> I'll just cover Chinese. Each Chinese character "fills" a square of the
>> same size, regardless how complex it is. ("Same size" obviously varies with
>> font size.)
>> As far as I know, the characters don't change depending on text
>> orientation, i.e. left-to-right versus top-to-bottom.
>> Fonts for Chinese can vary a bit in how much they look like characters
>> written with a brush. For example, compare the fonts "DF Fang Song", "DF
>> Kai Sho" and "DF Ming" (for traditional Chinese characters) on the page
>> <http://pinyin.info/news/2011/taoyuan-international-airport-
>> to-adopt-new-style-for-signs/>
>> <http://pinyin.info/news/2011/taoyuan-international-airport-to-adopt-new-style-for-signs/>:
>> the font "DF Kai Sho" looks most "brush-like". The samples represent the
>> three most common font types for Chinese: Ming ("Mincho" in Japanese), Kai
>> and Fang Song. (See also the font sample at
>> <http://birdtrack.com/TypSampB.pdf> <http://birdtrack.com/TypSampB.pdf>.)
>> There are other types of fonts, but the complexity of Chinese characters
>> (compared to alphabets such as Latin) and the requirement of legibility
>> limit what you can do. For example, there are no italics (or italics cause
>> the characters to be rendered as oblique). Even a bold font weight can make
>> characters hard to read.  That doesn't mean you can't have fancy Chinese
>> fonts (see e.g. the samples at <https://chinesefontdesign.com
>> /tag/simplified-chinese-font>
>> <https://chinesefontdesign.com/tag/simplified-chinese-font>) but you
>> wouldn't use these for "normal" text.
>> The "one square per character" rule also applies to punctuation, except
>> for the middle dot used to separate parts of a non-Chinese name (e.g.
>> 列奥纳多‧达‧芬奇, a Chinese transcription of "Leonardo da Vinci"). These
>> punctuation marks are therefore known as "fullwidth punctuation", as
>> opposed to the "halfwidth punctuation" used in text in the Latin alphabet.
>>
>> As far as I know, the "one square per character" rule also applies to
>> Japanese kanji, hiragana and katakana (in spite of the fact that kana are
>> much simpler than most kanji). (Japanese also has half-width kana from the
>> early days of Japanese computing, but it seems that they are today only
>> used in specific settings - according to Wikipedia:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-width_kana.)
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Christophe Strobbe
>>
>>
>>
>> On 31/05/2017 22:50, Wayne Dick wrote:
>>
>> These are some basic questions about CJK characters.
>>
>> Are they square?
>> Does it matter if we measure width or height?
>> Specifically,  will lr layout give the same letter spacing as vertical-rl?
>> What are the unicode-8 code sequences for visible characters in: Chinese,
>> Korean and Japanese?
>> Does font family vary as much in these languages as in Latin languages?
>> Wayne
>>
>>
>> --
>> Christophe Strobbe
>> Akademischer Mitarbeiter
>> Responsive Media Experience Research Group (REMEX)
>> Hochschule der Medien
>> Nobelstraße 10
>> 70569 Stuttgart
>> Tel. +49 711 8923 2749 <+49%20711%2089232749>
>>
>> “I drink tea and I know things.”
>> Falsely attributed to Christophe Lannister.
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> John Foliot
> Principal Accessibility Strategist
> Deque Systems Inc.
> john.foliot@deque.com
>
> Advancing the mission of digital accessibility and inclusion
>