Author Archive: Dr. Ken Lunde

Minor Adobe-Japan1-6 Unicode CMap Resource Update

Posted on August 13, 2012 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

Many thanks to Nozomu KATŌ (加藤望) for bringing to my attention that the Adobe-Japan1-6 Unicode CMap resources were missing the following mapping:

U+207F → CID+15908

I decided to add this mapping to the following eight Adobe-Japan1-6 Unicode CMap resources this evening:

UniJIS-UTF8-H
UniJIS-UTF16-H
UniJIS-UTF32-H
UniJIS2004-UTF8-H
UniJIS2004-UTF16-H
UniJIS2004-UTF32-H
UniJISX0213-UTF32-H
UniJISX02132004-UTF32-H

The eight updated CMap resources were just posted to the CMap Resources open source project that is hosted at Open @ Adobe, and the details are in the associated forum post.

Enjoy!

To CID, Or Not To CID

Posted on August 12, 2012 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

When developing OpenType/CFF fonts, in particular CJK ones or those with a large number of glyphs, one question that I am often asked by developers is whether it should be name-keyed or CID-keyed. The answer to this question is not simple, though it truly is a binary condition.
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Adobe’s First Open Source Font: Kenten Generic

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

Hoping not to detract from the attention that Paul Hunt‘s Source Sans Pro, Adobe’s first open source typeface family, deserves, I’d like to use this opportunity to point out that another font, a single typeface design with a very small number of glyphs, was Adobe’s first entry in the open source world, in terms of font offerings. Kenten Generic was released on November 4th, 2010 at the Open @ Adobe portal. It includes only thirteen glyphs—ten of which are functional—that are intended for use in typesetting emphasis marks, which are referred to as kenten (圏点) in Japanese, hence the font’s name. The easiest way to view its glyphs is to download its Unicode-based glyph synopsis.
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O… M… G…

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

I just spent a few minutes perusing the ATypI Hong Kong 2012 program. OMG. This is a literal dream come true for those interested in East Asian (aka CJK) typographic issues. Never before has this collection of experts gathered in a single location. My only regret is that I am unable to clone myself, because there are concurrent sessions in which I interested, or sessions that are taking place at the same time I am scheduled to present.

Again, if you’re on the fence about attending ATypI Hong Kong 2012, I urge you to attend. Such an opportunity is unlikely to present itself for a long time.

ATypI Hong Kong 2012 Program

Posted on July 29, 2012 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

For those who are already planning to attend ATypI Hong Kong 2012, or are considering it, the program has just been posted. The Keynote Speakers were announced a small number of weeks ago.

Given that this is the first time that ATypI will take place in East Asia, the number of CJK-related presentations is relatively high, and this should be expected considering its venue. To those who are on the fence about attending, I urge you to attend because ATypI is not likely to take place in East Asia for many more years. It is an opportunity that should not be missed. And, like other conferences, one of the greatest benefits—not listed on the program—is the opportunity for one-on-one interactions with others in this industry.

As a side note, I am very much looking forward to speaking at and attending ATypI Hong Kong 2012, and meeting new and familiar faces while there.

CFR Support in Mac OS X Version 10.8 (Mountain Lion)

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

On July 25, 2012, Apple released to the world Mac OS X Version 10.8 (aka Mountain Lion). Among the many new features in this latest iteration of Mac OS X is support for CFR objects. For those who are not aware, CFR objects are based on ISO/IEC 14496-28:2012 (Composite Font Representation), and are used to define both composite fonts and fallback fonts. CFR objects effectively break the 64K glyph barrier. Mac OS X Version 10.8 is thus the first implementation that has broken the 64K glyph barrier.
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Tokyo AFDKO Workshop (PM Session)

Posted on June 28, 2012 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

Once again, to those who were able to attend the Tokyo AFDKO Workshop that was held at Morisawa‘s Tokyo office on June 25th, thank you for your participation! Not counting those from Adobe and Morisawa, a total of 21 people attended. (Details about the AM session were covered in the previous article.)

For those who attended, and for those who could not attend, the presentation for Masataka Hattori’s (服部正貴) portion of the workshop is now available for download. Besides demonstrating how to build OpenType/CFF fonts based on the Adobe-Japan1-x and Adobe-Identity-0 ROSes, one of the highlights of Masataka’s presentation was demonstrating how to build a font that includes fully-proportional kana glyphs, based on the proven techniques which were used to develop Kazuraki (かづらき) that are detailed in Adobe Tech Note #5901 (Special-Purpose OpenType Japanese Font Tutorial: Kazuraki).
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Tokyo AFDKO Workshop (AM Session)

Posted on June 24, 2012 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

To those who were able to attend the Tokyo AFDKO Workshop that was held at Morisawa‘s Tokyo office on June 25th, thank you for your participation (and for enduring my poor Japanese speaking abilities)! I hope that you learned new ways in which particular AFDKO tools can be used to make your CID-keyed font production work (or workflow) more effective and less time-consuming.
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Two AFDKO-related Tool Updates

Posted on June 21, 2012 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

I spent this evening in Gyeongju, Korea enhancing two AFDKO-related tools, extract-cids.pl and extract-gids.pl.

These tools are tx filters, and simply output the list of CIDs or GIDs in a font. I had been using another tool, mkrange.pl, to turn the list into ranges. One of the enhancements, which is the addition of an “-r” option, makes the mkrange.pl tool no longer necessary. In other words, the following two command lines have the same result:

% extract-cids.pl -r <font>
% extract-cids.pl <font> | mkrange.pl

The extract-cids.pl tool was additionally enhanced with an “-s” option, which outputs the ranges on a single line using a comma separator. This makes the output very convenient in terms of repurposing it, such as copying it, then pasting it into a new command line as the argument of the “-g” option that is supported by many AFDKO tools. Consider the following two command lines and their output:

% extract-cids.pl -r cidfont.ps
/0-/8358
/8720-/9081
/9084-/9353

% extract-cids.pl -r -s cidfont.ps
/0-/8358,/8720-/9081,/9084-/9353

Enjoy!

IRG 38

Posted on June 19, 2012 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

I am currently in Gyeongju (경주시/慶州市), Republic of Korea (ROK), attending IRG 38. For those who are not aware, the IRG (Ideographic Rapporteur Group) is an ad hoc subcommittee of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 (aka WG2), and is charged with all matters related to CJK Unified Ideographs. In other words, all CJK Unified Ideograph repertoires, the latest being Extension D, are the direct result of work by the IRG. I am attending IRG 38 as the sole US and Unicode delegate, and this is the fifth IRG meeting I have attended. IRG meetings are week-long working meetings, and are held twice per year.
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