Fonts
Introduction
Fonts begin where character sets and encodings end. The characters defined by the encodings inside your computer are abstract, whereas the glyphs defined by a font are concrete visual forms that can be rendered on screen or paper.
Outline fonts are fonts in which glyphs are described mathematically as "outlines," i.e., a series of line segments, arcs, and curves. They are thus fully scalable: to print or display a character the outline is scaled to the desired size, then rendered by filling the outline with bits or pixels. The information provided here is limited to what the typical Chinese Mac user might want to know. If you want to learn more about font formats and printing technologies, Ken Lunde's CJKV Information Processing is very thorough on these topics.
Developed by Adobe, PostScript is a "page-description" language for printers. It supports both graphics and text, with built-in support for fonts. The most common PostScript font format is Type 1. Chinese Postscript fonts use the CID format, which uses Type 1 character descriptions tailored especially for East Asian writing systems. CID stands for "Character Identifier," which refers to the numbers that are used to index and access the characters in the font.
In 1991, Microsoft adopted Apple's new TrueType font format. Unfortunately, they used a different approach to storing the font data, so files had to be converted between Windows and Macintosh. Regardless, all TrueType fonts contain "cmap" tables that map the glyphs to encodings. With Mac OS X, Apple introduced support for Windows TrueType font files, eliminating this problem. The files, however, must contain Unicode cmap tables. Most Windows 98 and later fonts have them, while most Windows 95 and earlier fonts do not.
OpenType is an open standard developed by Microsoft and Adobe in 1996 to absorb the underlying differences between the TrueType and PostScript formats. OpenType fonts also use cmap tables. There are two kinds of OpenType fonts: those that use PostScript Type 1 outlines and carry the .OTF extension, and those that use TrueType outlines and carry the .TTF (or .TTC) extension.
You can learn more from:
- Apple: http://developer.apple.com/textfonts
- Adobe: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/opentype
- Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/typography
Foundries
Major font foundries include:
- DynaComware (華康, Hong Kong). Formerly DynaLab. Maker of the "DynaFont" line.
- Founder (方正, Beijing). Formerly Zhongyi.
- Arphic (文鼎, Taiwan).
Another important commercial foundry is SinoType (华文) in Changzhou, Jiangsu. They do not sell fonts retail, but their "ST" fonts have been widely distributed on a variety of platforms.
The best way for individuals to buy Chinese fonts is in CD bundles. Here are three good choices in terms of quality and value [as of January 2009]:
- Arphic OpenType 43. $80 from PenPower. A nice selection from Arphic's full OpenType set, mostly traditional Chinese. Includes Ming [明], Hei [黑], and Yuan [圓] in six weights each, Kai [楷], FangSong [仿宋], and LiShu [隸書] in three weights each, and nine other Big5 fonts in one weight each, along with some supplementary fonts.
- DynaFont OpenType 127. $200 from PenPower. A traditional Chinese font package with 115 Big5 fonts. Six of them have GB5 analogs, with GB 2312 companions.
- Founder Lanting [兰亭/蘭亭] TrueType 200. $125 from TwinBridge. A set of 62 fonts, GB 2312 paired with GB/T analogs (one is GB/T only). Many also have Big5 and/or GB5 companions. If you need Founder fonts, this is a good way to get started.
There are, of course, various other bundles available from these foundries and others. But few of these can be found at competitive prices outside of East Asia. The above vendors are two exceptions to the rule.
Fonts via Apple
Apple distributes a selection of Chinese outline fonts with OS 9 and OS X:
| Font name | Chinese | Charset | OS 9 | OS X 10.2 | OS X 10.3 | OS X 10.4 | OS X 10.5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arial Unicode MS | Unicode | v1.01x | |||||
| STHeiti Light [STXihei] | 华文细黑 | GB18030 | x | x | x | x | |
| STHeiti | 华文黑体 | GB18030 | x | x | x | x | |
| STKaiti | 华文楷体 | GB18030 | x | x | x | x | |
| STSong | 华文宋体 | GB18030 | x | x | x | x | |
| STFangsong | 华文仿宋 | GB18030 | x | x | x | x | |
| Hei | GB2312 | x | x | x | x | x | |
| Kai | GB2312 | x | x | x | x | x | |
| Song | GB2312 | x | x | x | |||
| Fang Song | GB2312 | x | x | x | |||
| Beijing | GB2312 | x | x | ||||
| LiHei Pro Medium | 儷黑 Pro | Big-5E HKSCS |
x | x | x | ||
| LiSong Pro Light | 儷宋 Pro | Big-5E HKSCS |
x | x | x | ||
| BiauKai | 標楷體 | Big-5 | x | x | x | x | x |
| Apple LiGothic Medium | 蘋果儷中黑 | Big-5 | x | x | x | x | x |
| Apple LiSung Light | 蘋果儷細宋 | Big-5 | x | x | x | x | x |
| Taipei | Big-5 | x | x |
Fonts via Microsoft
Microsoft distributes PMingLiU, SimSun, and SimHei with all editions of Windows 2000/XP. All Chinese editions include DFKai-SB. Simplified Chinese editions also include FangSong and KaiTi. All editions of Windows Vista come with the same set of fonts.
Note: PMingLiU and SimSun are proportional fonts, while MingLiU and NSimSun are monospaced. The difference only applies to Roman text.
| Font name | Chinese | Charset | File name | Windows 2000 | Windows XP | Windows Vista |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft JhengHei* | 微軟正黑體 | UnicodeA | msjh.ttf msjhbd.ttf |
v5.00 | ||
| PMingLiU MingLiU |
新細明體 細明體 |
Unicode | mingliu.ttc | v3.00 | v3.21 | v6.02†‡ |
| PMingLiU-ExtB MingLiU-ExtB |
UnicodeB | mingliub.ttc | v5.00† | |||
| DFKai-SB | 標楷體 | Unicode | kaiu.ttf | v3.00 | v3.00 | v5.00 |
| Microsoft YaHei* | 微软雅黑体 | GB18030 | msyh.ttf msyhbd.ttf |
v5.00 | ||
| SimHei | 黑体 | GBK | simhei.ttf | v2.10 | v3.02 | v5.01‡ |
| SimSun NSimSun |
宋体 新宋体 |
GBK | simsun.ttc | v2.11 | v3.03 | v5.00‡ |
| SimSun-ExtB | UnicodeB | simsunb.ttf | v5.00 | |||
| FangSong | 仿宋 | GB18030 | simfang.ttf | v5.01 | ||
| KaiTi | 楷体 | GB18030 | simkai.ttf | v5.01 | ||
| FangSong_GB2312 | 仿宋_GB2312 | GB2312 | SIMFANG.TTF | v2.00 | v2.00 | |
| KaiTi_GB2312 | 楷体_GB2312 | GB2312 | SIMKAI.TTF | v2.00 | v2.00 |
Unicode = Contains Unicode's CJK Unified Ideographs block.
UnicodeA = Contains Unicode's CJK Unified Ideographs and CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A blocks.
UnicodeB = Contains Unicode's CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B block (only).
* = These ClearType system fonts for Vista come in two weights, Regular and Bold.
† = Includes MingLiU_HKSCS and MingLiU_HKSCS-ExtB.
‡ = Also supports GB18030 and/or Unicode's CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A block.
Bug: Microsoft YaHei Bold v5.00 has the same PostScript name ("MicrosoftYaHei") as Microsoft YaHei Regular v5.00. Only one font with a given PostScript name can be active in Mac OS X at any time. As a result, the system treats the Bold font as if it were a duplicate of the Regular font, as indicated in Font Book when you have both fonts installed.
The Office 2000/XP/2003 Proofing Tools (and Chinese editions) all include the same set of 14 additional fonts, as follows:
- GBK character set: LiSu [SIMLI.TTF, 隶书], YouYuan [SIMYOU.TTF, 幼圆], STXihei [STXIHEI.TTF, 华文细黑], STKaiti [STKAITI.TTF, 华文楷体], STSong [STSONG.TTF, 华文宋体], STZhongsong [STZHONGS.TTF华文中宋], STFangsong [STFANGSO.TTF, 华文仿宋]
- GB 2312 and GB/T character sets: FZShuTi [FZSTK.TTF, 方正舒体], FZYaoti [FZYTK.TTF, 方正姚体]
- GB 2312 character set: STCaiyun [STCAIYUN.TTF, 华文彩云], STHupo [STHUPO.TTF华文琥珀], STLiti [STLITI.TTF, 华文隶书], STXingkai [STXINGKA.TTF, 华文行楷], STXinwei [STXINWEI.TTF, 华文新魏]
The Office XP/2003 Proofing Tools CDs (and Chinese editions) also include the font SimSun (Founder Extended) [SURSONG.TTF, 宋体-方正超大字符集]. Created in January 2001, it contains over 64,000 hanzi, including most of the CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B block. Works perfectly in OS X 10.3 and above. Install it in the /Library/Fonts folder, and re-login after installing it. To avoid problems in OS X 10.4, you should use Font Book to install this font. Use File > Add Fonts...
Troubleshooting:
- Both mingliu.ttc and/or mingliub.ttc cause application crashes in Adobe Creative Suite 2, notably Photoshop. Upgrade to Creative Suite 3 and above to fix the problem.
Free Fonts
Luc Devroye maintains various pages of links to fonts available for download on the Internet, including one that covers Chinese:
Academic Fonts
Mojikyo
The Mojikyo fonts are Japanese Shift-JIS-encoded fonts for the 48,902 Chinese characters in the Morohashi dictionary [大漢和辞典], along with tens of thousands of additional characters. Each character is assigned a six-digit Mojikyo number. The Morohashi characters are contained in fonts M101-109. Fonts M110 and above contain characters not in Morohashi. These include, for example, oracle-bone characters [甲骨文字, M117–118], Siddham [梵字, M119–121], and Tangut [西夏文字, M202–203].
There is a free "web" version of the fonts, available here:
http://www.mojikyo.org/html/download/
You can use the Windows fonts in OS X, though you will have to install them on a Windows machine first to get them. For OS 9 and earlier, you must use the Mac OS fonts. There are excellent HTML tables available here that will help with input and exploring the fonts after you have installed them.
Kinokuniya distributes a commercial version which adds more than 21,000 Chinese characters to the total, along with nearly 11,000 seal-script characters [篆書]. See: http://www.mojikyo.com/info/about/
Academia Sinica
The Chinese Document Processing Lab [文獻處理實驗室] (CDP) at Academia Sinica in Taiwan offers two different groups of fonts. As of January 2009, they require a Windows 2000/XP machine to get them, and both have problems with their font "name" tables that must be resolved before they can be used in Mac OS X.
- [漢字構形資料庫] Details coming soon. This is the most complete and up-to-date group.
- [古漢字字型] Four fonts, last updated in 2006, available via direct download (cdpfonts24.exe, 7.24 MB). Just install the package on a Windows 2000/XP machine and you'll get the following TrueType fonts:
- [北師大說文小篆] 7,475字
- [中研院金文] 1,533字
- [中研院甲骨文] 760字
- [中研院楚系簡帛文字] 1,095字
Font Editors
Apple Font Tools
Free. Apple provides a suite of command-line font tools, along with a set of instructions and a tutorial.
http://developer.apple.com/textfonts/fonttools
TypeTool
FontLab's TypeTool 3 allows you to create new and edit existing TrueType and OpenType fonts. Full Unicode support.
OS X 10.3 and above. US$99.
http://www.fontlab.com/font-editor/typetool
FontLab Studio
FontLab Studio 5 is the industry standard, with advanced editing capabilities. Handles most CJK font formats, but only exports fonts with up to 6,400 glyphs. Limited to Unicode's Basic Multilingual Plane and Supplementary Multilingual Plane (i.e., does not support the Supplementary Ideographic Plane).
OS X 10.3 and above. US$649.
http://www.fontlab.com/font-editor/fontlab-studio
AsiaFont Studio
FontLab's AsiaFont Studio 4 handles CJK fonts in all formats. Full Unicode support.
For OS 9.2+ and OS X 10.3+. US$1999.
http://www.fontlab.com/font-editor/asiafont-studio
Font Managers
Apple Font Book
Comes with OS X 10.3 and later. Font Book is a font viewer and organizer, with the ability to enable and disable fonts.
Note: You can use the Character Palette's View: Glyph > Glyph Catalog feature for a somewhat more detailed information about a given font's repertoire than Font Book provides.
LinoType FontExplorer
Free. OS X 10.3.9 and above. FontExplorer supports CJK fonts in all formats.
http://www.linotype.com/fontexplorerX
Extensis Suitcase Fusion
OS X 10.3.9 and above. Suitcase Fusion is a new Cocoa application, built to replace two Carbon/Classic applications (Suitcase and Font Reserve). It supports CJK fonts in all formats, but as of June 2006 its features for handling non-Latin fonts were not complete.