2 Nov
2011
2 Nov
'11
6:45 a.m.
? 2011/11/2 12:00, Sergiu Dumitriu ??:
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...
***
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...