documentation-packages team mailing list archive

[Mingye Wang <arthur2e5@xxxxxxxx>]

Jeff Bai <jeffbai@xxxxxxxx> and I are currently working on a newer
ordering of this file for the CJK part at https://github.com/AOSC-Dev
/aosc-os-abbs/issues/201. Hopefully we will come up with a modernized
version this weekend or so.

We are mainly focused on these points:

* Separate sans (hei), serif (ming/song) and cursive (kai). Like the current git version of the file, we are now only adding strongly monospace (i.e. monospace for non-han parts too) fonts as monospace, but this is actually worth a discussion IFF the font is only going to provide CJK chars. (We know at least FW kanas and hanzi/kanjis are always 1em wide (good), while some hanguls are like .93 em (oops).)
* Font weight matching. Many old CJK serifs (e.g. UMing, SimSun) look too thin to match common serifs, but the TeX community have good fonts to remedy this -- cwTeX and Fandol fonts. We add [kind of prepend, in CJK ranges] these fonts to the list accordingly. As a bonus, these are all FOSS. Some CJK sans on the other hand is too heavy (e.g. SimHei[1]), but now we have Noto Sans CJK/Source Han Sans to remedy this.
* Sans-serif monospace is better than serif monospace, at least for computer screens. Additionally, monospace CJK serifs are often old and have the very-thin-weight issue.

Note that we are not supposed to nor intending to fix any of these
"locale mix" problems like what was shown in the description of
attachment 24321. Locale matching problems should be done via in-browser
detection schemes like html lang tags, with appropriate locale-aware
requests to fc, which hopefully will be handled by other distro-specific
config wiles. We are only trying to make sure the styles of CJK part
matches latin fonts matched for the generic family names, as well as
themselves. (This is actually a terrible problem on MS Windows, where
they consider SimSun a sans-serif.)

(Well, considering the widths of some glyphs like 复 in Japanese fonts
(they are often not actually using the glyphs in the language but using
it as some glyph to be referenced by other glyphs), I will go with TW,
KR or CN fonts as the preferred source of Chinese glyphs. Choosing the
traditional locales is just for "going back the roots and be acceptable
to as many locales as possible". (KR glyphs are kind of old/kangxi-ish-
style -- lack of use lead to lack of evolution.))

[1]: In Chinese, Hei (黑) stands for black. This actually caused some
confusion and resulted in many people calling bold weights "Hei".

I have no idea on how to fix the bad "ja" language tags in Chinese fonts
though. (why are they trying to <s>eat</s> manage everything?)

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of
Documentation Packages, which is subscribed to ttf-wqy-zenhei in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/521163

Title:
  WenQuanYi Zen Hei is prioritised above Japanese fonts for Japanese
  language text

Status in Fontconfig:
  Unknown
Status in Ubuntu Translations:
  Triaged
Status in ttf-wqy-zenhei package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: ttf-wqy-zenhei

  (I hope I've picked the right place to start with reporting this bug.
  I find fontconfig and CJK font selection issues in general quite
  confusing.)

  In Karmic, running firefox seems to pick a non-Japanese font for displaying Japanese web pages. (You can tell because the preferred character styles are somewhat different.) This used to work in Jaunty, but Karmic makes a worse font choice. 
  [Details: I have LANG=en_GB.UTF-8 but also PANGO_LANGUAGE=en;ja to tell Pango to guess Japanese if it has to guess. I'll attach the result of running a firefox with FC_DEBUG=1 and looking at a sample page with problems; you can see it asking for a font with 'lang: "ja"' and getting back "WenQuanYi Zen Hei", so I don't think firefox is at fault here.]

  This seems to be because if we ask fontconfig for a "Sans" font for
  Japanese text it gives back the ttf-wqy-zenhei one instead:

  $ fc-match Sans:lang=ja
  wqy-zenhei.ttc: "WenQuanYi Zen Hei" "中等"

  I do have Japanese fonts installed:

  $ fc-list :lang=ja
  WenQuanYi Zen Hei Mono,文泉驛等寬正黑,文泉驿等宽正黑:style=Medium,中等
  Sazanami Mincho,さざなみ明朝:style=Mincho-Regular,Regular
  WenQuanYi Zen Hei,文泉驛正黑,文泉驿正黑:style=Medium,中等
  VL PGothic,VL Pゴシック:style=regular
  Sazanami Gothic,さざなみゴシック:style=Gothic-Regular,Regular
  VL Gothic,VL ゴシック:style=regular

  (and if you don't ask for a Sans font you get back one of those:
  $ fc-match :lang=ja
  ttf-japanese-gothic.ttf: "VL Gothic" "regular"
  )

  I think that if the application is asking for a font to display
  Japanese text in, then all Japanese fonts should be prioritised above
  any of the other CJK fonts...

  ProblemType: Bug
  Architecture: i386
  Date: Fri Feb 12 20:02:59 2010
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
  Package: ttf-wqy-zenhei 0.8.38-1ubuntu1
  PackageArchitecture: all
  ProcEnviron:
   PATH=(custom, user)
   LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-17.54-generic
  SourcePackage: ttf-wqy-zenhei
  Uname: Linux 2.6.31-17-generic i686

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