Comments on: Fonts matter people!

By: taekk

taekk — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 17:20:06 +0000

I switched the entire Chrome language settings to Japanese to fix the issue. The menus will all be in Japanese but you rarely need to use a menu in chrome, so not a big problem.

By: Chrome reluctant

Chrome reluctant — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 10:28:01 +0000

So I’ve read through the whole thread but unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a solution? What I’m most frustrated about is that chrome doesn’t allow you set the language you want to view a page in, or override the erroneous language detection.

Wish firefox was not such a bloat now.

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:13:40 +0000

Best option is to get the language pack. Seriously, hinted fonts such as Meiryo was one of the core features of Vista (and it wouldn’t surprise me if thats why Japan was one of the few countries it actually was rather successful in), and now Windows 7. But Microsoft were nice enough to release it as an optional pack for XP at least. Using Vista at home (yeah, I do otherwise hate it), I find Japanese on ill-equipped PCs now painful. You’ll know if you’ve got the pack, that new default Calibri is one of those fonts too.

By: Elliott

Elliott — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 13:10:58 +0000

wow so many comments and so little time.
What is the best solution? I love chrome, but also hate the Japanese font!

Is MS Gothic the best to use?

By: taekk

taekk — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:37:00 +0000

That site uses a separate dictionary file that has all the mapping information. It does not have the information directly in the code itself.

It’s in one of the files here: ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/Unihan.zip

Also, it turns out there isn’t a one-to-one mapping for traditional to simplified so it would be impossible to map it directly in unicode without being wrong for some 100 characters that don’t map directly. For example, traditional has one character that means “after” 後 and another that means “queen” 后. But simplified made both characters the same so you can’t easily convert 后 into traditional without knowing the whole word like 然后 vs 王后. Still, I would have preferred a mapping for the majority of characters that does have a one to one mapping.

By: Nami

Nami — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:27:57 +0000

Unicode does actually provide mappings. They have quite a few data files which provide extra information including things like “Y” is the uppercase version of “y”, “e” followed by a combining acute (U+0065 U+0301) is exactly the same as “é” (U+00E9) and 漢 has a simplified variant 汉 (they even include that last bit on http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin.....point=6F22). I suppose the problem is really that functions like to_simplified and to_traditional are nowhere near as common as ones like to_upper and to_lower.

By: Mihai

Mihai — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:51:06 +0000

I’m one of the passionate people about their fonts too, I guess )
I’ve never written about it, but from what I’ve been using so far, my favorite is MSP Gothic (ゴソック字体), and you’re right, fonts like in that screenshot from Google Chrome are a pain in the..text ^^ Another style of font is the Kyoukasho (教科書字体), but when the size is too small the strokes tend to become a little vague.
Looking forward for you book. The best style ever and the best motto ever in a Japanese grammar guide I’ve ever found – learning Japanese from a Japanese point of view.
ルーマニアから宜しくお願い致します。

By: taekk

taekk — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:52:18 +0000

Unicode is so much better than the hacks that came before it and categorizing every symbol in the world is no small feat. but it is silly that they did not assign a different code for characters that look different. They should have made them distinct but somehow allowed a mapping so that programs can know they’re the same in some languages. For instances, there’s three ways to write 漢. But why is 汉 a different character while the other two are the same even though the number of strokes are different. And how would a program know that 汉 is same as 漢? There’s no easy way to search for both when given one since there’s no mapping information in the code itself.

By: Russell

Russell — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:43:15 +0000

Perhaps I’m too harsh in my criticism of those behind the decision, who I admittedly know nothing about. Clearly they created a model of how these characters interact and are following it. I can’t fault the model or the reasoning behind it.

But regardless of its technical or linguistic correctness, it fails as a global standard for the simple reason that it is impossible to correctly render the content without knowing something else about it. Text is fundamentally useful only in as much as it can be shown to a person. The han unification means that, for a large chunk of people, it’s likely to look funny unless you know something else about it.

By: furrykef

furrykef — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 06:22:08 +0000

They failed to realize that, as you have observed, this means it’s impossible to know how to correctly render a chunk of text without knowing what language it is.

They didn’t fail to realize this at all. Making a decision despite the consequences isn’t the same thing as being ignorant of the consequences.

Moreover, the decision to unify Han characters wasn’t driven only by a desire to save space (although it was surely a major concern), but also because a Unicode codepoint is meant only to distinguish graphemes. For example, the Chinese version of 漢 and the Japanese version of 漢 just aren’t distinct characters for that purpose; they’re exactly the same except for the way the grass radical is written. Claiming that they’re completely different is a bit like claiming that these two letters are completely different. It just happens that, in the case of Chinese/Japanese, the stylistic difference is strongly associated with the particular language.

There’s also the fact that there is no encoding system (at least, not one that has any relevance) that distinguishes those two characters, so there isn’t a strong reason to distinguish them in Unicode, either. If an existing encoding had treated them differently, Unicode would have too.

I wonder, did the people behind the Han Unification speak either Japanese or Chinese?

Yes, actually, they did. I think the myth that Americans or Westerners in general are behind Han Unification is a bit damaging. (Of course, who came up with an idea has no relevance as to whether it’s a good idea or not in the first place, but that’s not how things work in politics…)

- Kef