Re: [xwiki-devs] [xwiki-users] [VOTE] Which font faces to use for exporting CJK (Chinese/Japanese/Korean) characters in PDFs? - xwiki-devs@xwiki.org

2 Nov 2011

On 11/02/2011 01:45 AM, Yang Li wrote:
...
  ? 2011/11/2 12:00, Sergiu Dumitriu ??:
    ***
 Q1: Should Kai or Ming be used as the default export font for Chinese?
 ***

 I'm far from being an expert here, but my opinion is that the Kai
 variant, with it's handwritten look, is better suited for printed
 material. Still, PDFs are also used on screen, be that a large
 computer monitor or a handheld device, and on screen the legibility of
 the Ming variant is better. One option that I like is to use Kai for
 normal text and Ming for tt/code elements, as a kind of monospace.
  As a Chinese, I strongly recommend *song* , the most poluar font, and we
 seldom use ming in official documents... 
 Reading on Wikipedia I got the impression that there isn't a clear
 distinction between Ming and Song, and some refer to the same thing
 with both terms. Looking at the list of CJK fonts
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CJK_fonts none of the fonts that
 have Song in their name are under an open source friendly license, so
 they can't be redistributed. Please take a look at the sample PDF and
 see if it is acceptably similar to Song:
 http://jira.xwiki.org/secure/attachment/23886/ming-over-freefont.pdf  According to
the wikipedia
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_%28typefaces%29
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 The names Song (or Sung) and Ming correspond to the Song Dynasty
 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_Dynasty> when a distinctive printed
 style of regular script <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_script>
 was developed, and the Ming Dynasty
 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_Dynasty> during which that style
 developed into the Ming typeface style.^[1]
 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_%28typefaces%29#cite_note-kinkido-0>
 In Mainland China, the most common name is Song (the Mainland Chinese
 standardized Ming typeface in Microsoft Windows
 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows> being named SimSun). In
 Hong Kong <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong>, Taiwan
 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan>, Japan
 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan> and Korea
 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea>, Ming is prevalent. In Hong Kong
 and Taiwan, "Song typeface" (??) has been used but "Ming typeface"
(??)
 has increased currency since the advent of desktop publishing
 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_publishing>. Some type foundries
 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_foundry>^[2]
 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_%28typefaces%29#cite_note-1> use
 "Song" to refer to this style of typeface that follows a standard such
 as the Standard Form of National Characters
 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Form_of_National_Characters>, and
 "Ming" to refer to typefaces that resemble forms found in the Kangxi
 dictionary <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangxi_dictionary>.
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Ming and Song (or Sung) is different indeed, and Song is popular in
 Mainland China while Ming is popular in HK, TW, or JP and so on. They
 are similar, however, Song has more sharp angles or corners than Ming,
 while Ming has smooth ones, illustrated in the following two
 pictures(Ming and Song):

 Actually, there seems to be both Ming and Song available according to
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arphic_Public_License#Arphic_Public_License
 But I cannot find where to download the fonts... 
Yeah, tell me about it, in the end I used the ones repackaged in 
CJKUnifonts, which only provide UKai and UMing. After searching some 
more I found their Song variant, but it's older and less complete than 
the other two.

Anyway, thanks a lot for the feedback, you've been of great help.
-- 
Sergiu Dumitriu
http://purl.org/net/sergiu/