CJK Type Blog

For the longest time I have felt that the names used for many of our CMap resources deserve some amount of explanation. I see these names written in books from time to time, and it usually gives me a chuckle, mainly because I am the one responsible for coining many of them. This post is an opportunity for me to provide (some) definitive answers, along with some history. Of course, if this post raises more questions, please submit a comment, and I will make an honest effort to provide a timely answer.

In general, and with few exceptions, a CMap resource name is composed of a character set name, and encoding name, and a writing direction. For the most part, it is the character set names that deserve some explanation, because the encoding and writing direction names are fairly straight-forward. Also, whenever I mention a CMap resource name, it almost always has a corresponding vertical CMap resource.
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Unicode Version 6.1 was released today (January 31, 2012). This release triggered an update to the Unicode CMap resources for Adobe-Japan1-6 and Adobe-Korea1-2. The updated CMap resources are now available at the CMap Resources open source project that is hosted at Open @ Adobe. Details have been posted.

Given that Unicode has become the de facto encoding for digital text for modern environments, I encourage readers of this blog to explore for themselves what is new in Unicode Version 6.1.

I spent the early part of this week updating Adobe Tech Note #5079 (The Adobe-GB1-5 Character Collection). The number of glyphs remained the same (30,284), as did the glyphs themselves. So, why the update? Well, mainly to bring it in line, format-wise, with the other three related Adobe Tech Notes: #5078 (The Adobe-Japan1-6 Character Collection), #5080 (The Adobe-CNS1-6 Character Collection), and #5093 (The Adobe-Korea1-2 Character Collection). The biggest effort was to create its 61-page glyph table. Besides announcing the update, building the glyph table is the substance of this blog post.
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The Adobe-Japan1-6 Character Collection, which has become the de facto glyph set for today’s mainstream OpenType Japanese fonts, celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. This glyph set began its life in 1992, as Adobe-Japan1-0 (Supplement 0). Given that I have been at Adobe longer than 20 years, and was involved in the development of this glyph set, I will use this opportunity to detail some of its history, at least as seen through my eyes.
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When developing CID-keyed OpenType/CFF fonts that are based on one of our public ROSes—meaning Adobe-GB1-5, Adobe-CNS1-6, Adobe-Japan1-6, or Adobe-Korea1-2 (including their earlier Supplements)—it is a good idea to leverage existing resources. One of these resources are the registered GSUB (Glyph SUBstitution) features that we define when building OpenType/CFF fonts that are based on these ROSes. Of course, if you build an OpenType/CFF font based on the special-purpose Adobe-Identity-0 ROS, you’re pretty much on your own in terms of defining its GSUB features, but this CJK Type Blog post from earlier this month demonstrated how existing GSUB features for our public ROSes can be used as the basis for such fonts.
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Two of our font- and CJK-related Adobe Tech Notes were updated this week. One aspect of the update is for issuing a new Supplement or to correct representative glyphs. Another aspect is to typeset the document according to latest practices. For these Adobe Tech Notes, the latter aspect involved changing their static glyph tables into a form that is more efficient, more useful, and more dynamic.
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Given that I seem to be on a roll, it seems appropriate to begin a new AFDKO series that focuses on the all-important “features” file that is used to define GSUB and GPOS features, and to override the settings of various tables. Let’s begin with something relatively simple, such as overriding the ‘vmtx‘ table for a very specific class of glyphs: full-width Latin or Latin-like glyphs that rest on a Latin baseline, but which should be centered along the Y-axis when in vertical writing mode. Click here to download an archive that includes the various files and resources that are referenced in this article.
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In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, I demonstrated how AFDKO tools can be used to convert name-keyed fonts into CID-keyed ones. Part 1 resulted in a font that uses the special-purpose Adobe-Identity-0 ROS, and Part 2 resulted in one that uses a standard character collection, specifically the Adobe-Japan1-0 ROS.

Part 3 in this series will demonstrate how GSUB features—using the ‘vert‘ GSUB feature as an example—can be added to both types of fonts. Click here to download an archive that includes the various files and resources that are referenced in this article.
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Part 2 of this series will demonstrate how AFDKO tools can be used to specify multiple FDArray elements (aka, hint dictionaries) when converting name-keyed fonts into CID-keyed ones. The same technique can be used to convert a CID-keyed font with a single FDArray element into one with multiple FDArray elements.

The sample font in Part 1 of this series does not have enough script “richness” to demonstrate this technique, so I crafted a different sample font for demonstration purposes. Again, the technique is easily scalable, and can thus handle thousands or tens of thousands of glyphs.
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