RE: Chinese font families

Hi Elika,

Some comments follow.

Addison

> -----Original Message-----
> From: fantasai [mailto:fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2014 5:25 PM
> To: public-i18n-core@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Chinese font families
> 
> 
> Page = https://www.w3.org/International/wiki/Chinese_font_families

> I presume. :)
[AP>] 

Exactly so.
> 
> 'fantasy' in non-Latin fonts is probably as broad and crazy and more-or-less
> useless a general category as it is for Latin. I think it's basically "things which
> didn't fit elsewhere"... Here are some examples for Chinese:
>    http://chinesefont.brushes8.com/diamond-sweetheart-mobile-phone-

> font-simplified-chinese-traditional-chinese.html
>    http://chinesefont.brushes8.com/classic-decorative-pattern-airflow-font-

> traditional-chinese.html
>    http://chinesefont.brushes8.com/japan-san-ci-yuan-font-simplified-

> chinese.html
[AP>] 

I'm not suggesting otherwise ;-). I wasn't going to worry too much about this generic.

> 
> Monospace is pretty straightforward: it would be a font in which all
> characters are the same width. They can be serif, sans-serif, cursive, or
> whatever, but they have to have a consistent advance width. For many East
> Asian fonts, all letters belonging to the East Asian scripts are the same width,
> however punctuation, Latin, and digits are often proportional. A monospace
> font will not have proportional punctuation, Latin, or digits: all characters with
> an advance width must have the same advance width. Monospace fonts are
> typically used for coding and ASCII art.
> 
[AP>] 

Monospace is not as straightforward as it looks. I agree about the definition. The problem is that there are few CJK fonts that are designed to fit that definition of monospace. Although *most* glyphs in a CJK font have the same advance width (to match the ideographic "grid"), others have exactly half a space or have proportional behavior. So my concern isn't that we can't identify what a monospace font is, but rather that most systems don't provide one at all in CJK (and many other scripts). Maybe that's okay and valid, though.

> > The same questions can be applied to other scripts, such as Indic or Arabic.
> > For example, while all Arabic scripts are "cursive", one supposes "cursive"
> > doesn't mean Kufi?
> 
> I suppose the same. I think Kufi would be categorized however we
> categorize blackletter fonts for Latin. I'm not sure how we categorize
> blackletter fonts for Latin, though. :) I think it would either be serif or fantasy.
> 
[AP>] 

Certainly some Kufi fonts are the definition of fantasy!

> > For the second problem, while it is common to associate fonts like
> > Song with the serif style or Gothic with the sans-serif style, this
> > leaves some stylistic variations that do not have exact associations
> > out in the cold. For example, one site lists these styles for Chinese
> > (I do not vouch for the accuracy/completeness):
> >
> > "sans-serif" - such as Hei; system provided "sans-serif" font on many
> > platforms "serif" - such as Ming/Song/Sung, etc.; system provided
> > "serif" font on many platforms "regular script" - such as Kai; more
> > calligraphic, second most common print style after Ming/Song
> > "semi-cursive" - such as Xing; somewhere in between Kai and Cao "grass
> > script" - such as Cao; free-flowing cursive "clerical script"  - such
> > as Li; old-fashioned but colorful and still pretty widely used "seal
> > script" - used on seals, not widely used for longer text but sometimes
> > used for visual effect
> 
> I'm unsure about the last two (I'd probably put clerical script in the same
> bucket as blackletter and Kufi), but I think Kai, Xing, and Cao would all fall
> under 'cursive'. For Latin, for example, cursive spans from Monotype Corsiva
> through the Zaner and Carpenter Script families, i.e. varying levels of
> cursiveness.
[AP>] 

I agree that we could do that. The question is: do Chinese typographers want/need a stylistic category that is distinct from serif/sans/cursive/fantasy? And, even if we squeeze Chinese in, what happens with other languages like Arabic? While on some level I'm worried about creating a whole wildly varied zoo of generics (think counter styles), on another level squeezing everything together is kind of unlike what we normally look to do in the I18N space.
> 
> > So the problem is whether we should provide additional generic names
> > for users of these scripts. These generic names, if added, have a
> > specific implementation impact: vendors have to support resolving
> > these generic names to some font (whether an appropriate typeface is
> installed or not).
> > But not providing these names makes it difficult to style documents in
> > these languages even when the exact typeface name isn't required.
> > Thus, I tend to favor documenting and adding additional language- or
> > script-specific generics, including providing pre-defined mappings to
> > the existing generics (e.g. "clerical" -> "serif").
> 
> I agree with this. We should try to map to existing generics insofar as possible.
> It might still be necessary to provide additional generics in some cases, but
> that route should be reserved for cases where a distinction in typeface styles
> is used within single documents to represent semantic distinction, similar to
> Kai vs. Song in Chinese.
> 
[AP>]

Mapping onto existing generics is desirable or even required for backwards compatibility. But ideally designers would be able to use appropriate stylistic variations without regard for whether the distinction is important in a given single document or style sheet. If I want a Nastaliq style, I should be able to specify it directly and not hope that sans-serif will deliver it (and not Naskh). If the user's system has no generic "nastaliq", falling back then on an appropriate style like "serif" is better than ransom notes, tofu, or other squint-worthy behavior.

Received on Thursday, 23 October 2014 04:02:23 UTC