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CJK Sans?

Open MAZ06 opened this issue 1 year ago • 17 comments

Why are CJK characters (specifically Japanese and Korean) in a sans font? Shouldn't they be serif like (almost) everything else?

Edit: Actually, I'm noticing a lot of sans fonts where serif is available. Tamil is also sans even though Noto has a serif version. Why is LGC in serif but other languages are in sans?

MAZ06 avatar May 09 '24 18:05 MAZ06

I mostly prefer serif, but depends on “the most canonical” look of letters for foreigners. Serif: Han ideographs regardless of country, old CJK scripts. Sans: Kana (except Hentaigana, I’ve found a very interesting font where Hentaigana is sans → scrapped), Hangul

Tamil just uses standard Windows font :) About Telugu, Malayalam, Myanmar — I even don’t know. Javanese — at least W10 has good Javanese, but because of long ascenders/descenders I could not fit it to the cell :) Lanna — recently found Odia, Gurmukhi, Gujarati — I’m glad that Noto made a cool semi-serif font Ethiopic — I prefer normal serif to “canonical” calligraphic font, and I think the best version for Ethiopic is semi-serif like on Mac Same for Caucasian Albanian: there is a grave of scholar who studied it, and it was written in nice semi-serif — just want! (UPD: Caucasian is sans, semi-serif is normal Georgian, but still want such Caucasian) Nüshu — want some sort of serif Old scripts scratched on something like Brahmi or Parthian — just sans Devanagari, Bengali, Kannada — only serif! Khojki — does not really matter, but Noto serif is so nice! Old Indic — probably sans because of method of writing (on copper foil or palm leaves) Gothic is so “gothic” that I specifically looked for serif! Makasar — want special “bird” serif as written on treaties with Dutch East-Indic company

Mercury13 avatar May 09 '24 19:05 Mercury13

About new scripts like Toto — it’s better to base fonts on handwritten specimen. Specifically Toto — cool people from SIL made a canonical font, but IDK what to take for Tangsa, canonical letters are being drawn right away. SIL also made a font for Kirat, also based on handwriting rather than on Unicode images.

Mercury13 avatar May 09 '24 19:05 Mercury13

Why not use Noto for Tamil? I feel like Noto should be the default font in most cases.

Same for Javanese. Also, it looks like Javanese fits into the cells just fine in Unicodia...

MAZ06 avatar May 09 '24 21:05 MAZ06

Javanese is Noto, just because of those funky metrics! And because of W7, of course: just a few days ago I proclaimed that I have nothing for W7 except simple runnability, the former policy was the entire base plane and three P1 scripts of extreme importance.

User fonts glitch sometimes, and those glitches are hard to repeat and fix.

Someday I will move Korean to serif, but kana will remain sans. It’ll also improve Han radicals and Bopomofo.

Which scripts are done really well with Noto: Canadian, probably Tangsa (IDK), Mongol (except glyphs).

I prefer other fonts if possible. For Arabic I use SIL’s Scheherazade.

Mercury13 avatar May 09 '24 21:05 Mercury13

What's wrong with Noto Arabic?

MAZ06 avatar May 09 '24 21:05 MAZ06

IDK about complex Arabic rendering, but it adopted new characters very late.

Mercury13 avatar May 09 '24 21:05 Mercury13

Should be okay to switch to Noto Arabic now, right?

I'm looking forward to #314.

MAZ06 avatar May 10 '24 13:05 MAZ06

Noto Arabic — IDK. We’ll see in the autumn who will draw four new characters first. In U14 and 15 Scheherazade was long ahead.

Mercury13 avatar May 10 '24 14:05 Mercury13

@MAZ06 I want to take a sabbatical and stop doing anything big. But at least I’ll draw a mockup of how I see #314 Arabic. image

Mercury13 avatar May 10 '24 18:05 Mercury13

ken-jeong-community

MAZ06 avatar May 10 '24 18:05 MAZ06

The forms are also not labeled... :(

MAZ06 avatar May 10 '24 18:05 MAZ06

Wait... Those aren't even the actual forms... lol

MAZ06 avatar May 10 '24 18:05 MAZ06

@MAZ06 I don’t want to make styles like in other two channels, Glagolitic or vertical. Yes, that’s a mockup. And here’s the old thing — Glagolitic. image

Mercury13 avatar May 10 '24 18:05 Mercury13

There is so much room on the right. You could easy put everything there full-sized, including the Bulgaria/Croatia stuff.

The text below can be pushed to the bottom.

MAZ06 avatar May 10 '24 18:05 MAZ06

You are quite right, but that removes one thing — selection what style to draw in table. Does it matter?

Mercury13 avatar May 10 '24 18:05 Mercury13

For Bulgaria/Croatia? You could just keep the radio buttons...

Like, draw both on the right, but also keep the buttons.

MAZ06 avatar May 10 '24 18:05 MAZ06

@MAZ06 I want to build a mixed sans+serif font, so Hangul and Bopomofo will be serif. Hard, probably.

Mercury13 avatar May 13 '25 22:05 Mercury13