CJK = [ C(t) + C(s) ] + J +K ... or, is there is a problem in east asia

hartmannsgruber2 October 2009 · 08:00

Recently I was working on a project for a client, and realised that they used different fonts for their East Asian markets. I was looking in proposing one gothic CJK font for the whole region, but had to realise that that'snot so easy.

I know there are Mircosoft fontswhich offer a complete CJK set, but looking for fonts with a good variety of weights, to mach them with the latin house-type, was not easy at all.

For the time we kept the 3 different fonts for C, J & K.

Did anyone else have the same problem?

lunde2 October 2009 · 20:02

What you're after is a Pan-CJK font, meaning a single typeface design that serves multiple CJK locales. This is a topic of one of my IUC33 presentations that will take place in about two weeks. See: IUC33

The primary issue is that some CJK Unified Ideographs may require two or more glyphs to satisfy the CJK locales, due to Han Unification.

Dr. Ken Lunde
Senior Computer Scientist, CJKV Type Development
Adobe Systems Incorporated
lunde@adobe.com

hartmannsgruber3 October 2009 · 10:18

Ken,

I checked out the link. A very interesting conference indeed. But unfortunately I will not be able to come to San Jose.

It looks like there is no easy fix to my problem.

I wonder how designers in the region deal with it? Are there foundries of fonts (i guess 4 localised versions) that match up?

---
JH, London

lunde3 October 2009 · 12:06

The iPhone includes two Pan-CJK fonts. They went with the TTC approach, meaning that four separate font instances, one for each of the CJK locales (Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean), are advertised. Send to me an email in a couple of weeks, after IUC33 is over, and I'll send to you my presentation about this topic. It will details the issues, the work involved, and various solutions.

Dr. Ken Lunde
Senior Computer Scientist, CJKV Type Development
Adobe Systems Incorporated
lunde@adobe.com

hartmannsgruber4 October 2009 · 13:57

Thanks Ken. Will e-mail you then.
Would love to see your presentation.

best.

---
JH, London

Riccardo Sartori17 February 2010 · 15:05

@lunde: I think there are several people that could be interested in that presentation (I, for one, am! ;-)

lunde19 February 2010 · 07:58

Here you go: Designing & Developing Pan-CJK Fonts for Today.

Riccardo Sartori19 February 2010 · 12:49

Thanks! :-)

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