Re: [css3-fonts] Synthesizing oblique, to which direction in RTL and vertical flow?

2013/2/4 John Daggett <jdaggett@mozilla.com>:
> Here again, the right answer is to use an italic face.  For upright
> ideographic characters I'm mystified why someone would consider #6
> to be correct, the rendering of basic ideographic characters shouldn't
> vary whether it's included in horizontal or vertical runs.  The Webkit
> rendering (#8) seems like the better choice.

Totally agreed, but I guess one has to be reminded of the context
here: That in both Chinese and Japanese (perhaps Korean too, but I
can’t read Korean) the word “italics” has been mistranslated as
“slanted type,” and this mistranslation is so ingrained that so NO ONE
(not even professional graphic designers) would think of “an italic
face” when we mention “italics” in a CJK context.

Personally speaking, I’d say a style that corresponds to the correct
definition of “italics” does exist in CJK typography (see my blog if
you’re interested), but the direction of the slant doesn’t match that
of Latin italics (whether we are talking about horizontal or vertical
writing). So #8 will feel wrong because the direction of the slant is
wrong (especially when writing vertically). And add to that the fact
that we don’t use that style the way we use italics in Latin text. So
#6 is obviously wrong, but since #8 is wrong too but harmonizes with
the Latin, I can see why *someone* might prefer #6 =P

(After all, the reason, as far as I know, for Chinese having been
turned into a horizontal LTR script was to harmonize with Latin text…)

-- 
cheers,
-ambrose <http://gniw.ca/>

Received on Tuesday, 5 February 2013 04:54:01 UTC