CJK Type Blog

This week once again proved that one is never too old to learn something new.

My friends at Sandoll Communications (산돌커뮤니케이션) kindly informed me earlier this week that the offical Korean Standards Association (한국표준협회/韓國標準協會) logo, U+327F ㉿ KOREAN STANDARD SYMBOL, which has been encoded in Unicode from the very beginning (Version 1.1), is generic, both in terms of typeface design and weight, and that there is an actual specification for its design. This character is included in Unicode because it was also included in the KS X 1001 (정보 교환용 부호(한글 및 한자)) standard at position 02-62. The very bottom of the specification page on the KSA website includes a link to a ZIP file that contains the image for the KSA logo in two forms: a 592×840-pixel JPEG image and an Adobe Illustrator vector image file.

I used this opportunity to update the Adobe-KR-9 Character Collection specification, both in terms of its official glyph chart (PDF) and its two fully-functional example OpenType/CFF fonts that are downloadable from its latest release. The “UTF-32.pdf” file that is available in the latest release of the CMap Resources open source project was also updated for good measure. Below is an excerpt from the Adobe-KR-9 glyph chart:

Of course, the Source Han Sans and Source Han Serif Pan-CJK typeface families, along with the Google-branded versions, Noto Sans CJK and Noto Serif CJK, will get the same treatment as part of their Version 2.000 updates.

The image below shows the various forms of U+327F ㉿ that are present in the fonts that are currently installed in my machine, which includes a small number of seemingly oddball glyphs from fonts that are meant for testing purposes:

Interestingly, the only fonts whose glyphs for U+327F ㉿ actually conform to KSA’s design specifications are the two example OpenType/CFF fonts for the Adobe-KR-9 Character Collection specification that I just updated, which are highlighted in a green box. The only font whose glyph for U+327F ㉿ seems to be the closest to adhering to the specification is Malgun Gothic Bold, which is highlighted in a red box. Everything else is seriously off-mark.

For the benefit of font developers who wish to update this glyph in their fonts, I prepared a two-glyph Type 1 font that includes the glyph for U+327F ㉿, uni327F, which was converted from the Adobe Illustrator file that KSA supplies. The second glyph is the mandatory .notdef glyph.

Lastly, I also alerted Unicode about changing the representative glyph for U+327F ㉿ in their code charts.

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