Posts in Category "Type"

Source LOCL Test

This is a brief article to draw readers’ attention to my latest test font, which is a 12-font 65,535-glyph OpenType/CFF Collection that is intended to test how well an app or other font-consuming environment supports language tagging for East Asian text, to include the handling of localized strings, such as those for menu names in the 'name' table, and for named Stylistic Set 'GSUB' features.

The Variable Font Collection test fonts that were made available at the beginning of this month serve this purpose to some extent, but they also require an environment that supports not only Variable Fonts (aka OpenType/CFF2 fonts), but also Variable Font Collections (aka OpenType/CFF2 Collections). The main intent of this OpenType/CFF Collection is to remove the Variable Font baggage from the testing requirement. It also includes support for Macao SAR as a third form of Traditional Chinese, which was described in the previous article.

Please visit the open source Source LOCL Test project for more details, or to download the pre-built OpenType/CFF Collection binary from the Latest Release page.

Enjoy!

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Variable Font Collections

This is a short article that is simply meant to draw developers’ attention to three OpenType/CFF2 Collections (aka Variable Font Collections) that I built this week, which are now available in the open source Variable Font Collection Test project. As stated in the project, the purpose of these Variable Font Collections is to simulate the Source Han and Noto CJK fonts deployed as Variable Fonts, to help make sure that the infrastructure—OSes, apps, layout engines, libraries, and so on—will support them. Remember that it took several years for Microsoft to support OpenType/CFF Collections (OTCs), which finally happened on 2016-08-02. In other words, this is not trivial.
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さらば、CID フォント!

“Everything that has a beginning, has an end. I see the end coming.” — The Oracle

To first provide some background, I started to work at Adobe right before we invented CID-keyed fonts. The first desktop (aka non-printer) deployment of CID-keyed fonts was in the form of “Naked-CID fonts” in 1993 or so, which required ATM (Adobe Type Manager) to be installed. While such fonts were available for Macintosh and Windows OSes, Naked-CID fonts for the latter OS were incredibly short-lived and therefore rare, and were subsequently replaced with OpenType/CFF fonts in the late 1990s. Naked-CID fonts for the former OS were replaced by “sfnt-wrapped CIDFonts” (aka “sfnt-CID fonts”) in the mid-1990s, and also required that ATM be installed. Adobe Tech Note #5180, entitled “CID-Keyed sfnt Font File Format for the Macintosh,” details the sfnt-wrapped CIDFont format, which is specific to Macintosh due to its use of a resource fork.

With that stated, fonts are among the most perpetual and resilient of digital resources, meaning that discontinuing support for legacy font formats cannot be done quickly, and many years must pass before it can be realistically considered.
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Source Han Sans Version 2.000 Technical Tidbits

日本語 (Japanese) はこちら

(Everything that is stated in this article applies to the corresponding Google-branded Pan-CJK typeface family, Noto Sans CJK. Likewise, any reference to Source Han Serif also applies to Noto Serif CJK.)

The last time that a new version of the Source Han Sans family, along with the Google-branded version, Noto Sans CJK, was released was in June of 2015 in the form of Version 1.004. I know from personal experience that a lot of planning, preparation, and work took place during the three years that followed, and the end result is Version 2.000 of both Pan-CJK typeface families.

If you’re interested in learning more details about some of the changes, enhancements, and additions that Version 2.000 offers, please continue reading this article.
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Ten Mincho Redux: SVG & Text

日本語 (Japanese) はこちら

Flashback to almost exactly a year ago.

We released Ten Mincho (貂明朝) Version 1.000 during MAX Japan 2017, and I published this marten-laced article that provided technical details about its fonts. Now, a year later, and during MAX Japan 2018, we have released Version 2.003 of this cute and mischievous typeface family. Please continue to read if you have interest in details about the new and updated fonts that are included as part of this Japanese typeface family.
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帰ってきた「貂明朝」:SVG と「テキスト」

English (英語) here

(翻訳:Adobe Type チーム 山本太郎、西村美苗)

あれからほぼ一年たった。

貂明朝のバージョン 1.000 をリリースしたのは、昨年の MAX Japan 2017 開催中のことだった。そのフォントの技術的な詳細に関しては、この記事を書いて、おまけに、貂の写真を何枚も貼り付けておいた。さて 1 年後の今、同じく MAX Japan 2018 の開催期間中に、この妖しくも可愛い書体ファミリーのバージョン 2.003 をリリースした。この日本語書体ファミリーに新たに追加されたフォントやその他の改善点について、技術的詳細を知りたい方はこの記事を参照されたい。
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「源ノ角ゴシック」バージョン 2.000 の技術的な特長について

English (英語) here

(翻訳:Adobe Type チーム 山本太郎、西村美苗)

(この記事中の事項はすべて、Google の Pan-CJK 書体ファミリー、Noto Sans CJK にもあてはまる。源ノ明朝に言及している場合には Google の Noto Serif CJK にもあてはまる。)

源ノ角ゴシックファミリーを、Google により製品化されたバージョンである Noto Sans CJK ファミリーも含めて、バージョン 1.004 にアップデートしたのは、2015 年 6 月だった。以来、さまざまな計画を立案し、また膨大な量の準備と作業を積み重ねてきた。その結果、Pan-CJK フォントファミリー:源ノ角ゴシックと Noto Sans CJK のバージョン 2.000 が誕生した。

バージョン 2.000 での変更・改良点の詳細について関心があれば、以下を参照されたい。
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“Strange Things Are Afoot at the Circle K” → U+327F ㉿

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.
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About Adobe-Japan1-7 Font Names

日本語 (Japanese) はこちら

The feedback that we received from the previous article on this subject has been extraordinarily valuable. Our proposal to leave the names of Adobe-Japan1-7 subset fonts unchanged met with virtually unanimous agreement, but given the relatively minor nature of the Adobe-Japan1-7 additions, to the tune of only two glyphs, the same naming policy seems to benefit Adobe-Japan1-6 fonts as well.

In other words, fonts that currently support Adobe-Japan1-6 in its entirety can be updated to Adobe-Japan1-7 without changing their names. Of course, the advertised Supplement value as recorded in the 'CFF ' table should reflect 7. The following is a revised version of the table from the previous article on this subject:

Supplement Designator JIS2004-Savvy Designator /CIDFontName & Menu Name Examples
3 Std StdN KozMinStd-Regular, 小塚明朝 Std R
KozMinStdN-Regular, 小塚明朝 StdN R
4 Pro ProN KozMinPro-Regular, 小塚明朝 Pro R
KozMinProN-Regular, 小塚明朝 ProN R
5 Pr5 Pr5N KozMinPr5-Regular, 小塚明朝 Pr5 R
KozMinPr5N-Regular, 小塚明朝 Pr5N R
6 Pr6 Pr6N KozMinPr6-Regular, 小塚明朝 Pr6 R
KozMinPr6N-Regular, 小塚明朝 Pr6N R
7 Pr6 Pr6N KozMinPr6-Regular, 小塚明朝 Pr6 R
KozMinPr6N-Regular, 小塚明朝 Pr6N R

Of course, we still welcome any and all feedback about this font-naming issue.

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Adobe-Japan1-7 のフォント名について

English (英語) here

先のブログ記事について、既にいくつか貴重なフィードバックを受け取っている。Adobe-Japan1-7 のサブセットとなるフォントの名前を変えずにそのままにしておくという提案については、ほぼ大方の賛同を得ることができたが、Adobe-Japan1-7 での追加が二つのグリフだけに限定されるため、Adobe-Japan1-6 対応のフォントについても、名前を変えない方が良いという意見があった。

言い換えれば、現時点で Adobe-Japan1-6 に対応しているフォントは、名前を変更せずに Adobe-Japan1-7 にアップデートできるということだ。もちろん、CFF テーブルに記録されるべき Supplement の値は「7」に設定しておく必要がある。この考えに沿って、前回の記事の表を以下のように修正した。

Supplement Designator JIS2004-Savvy Designator /CIDFontName & Menu Name Examples
3 Std StdN KozMinStd-Regular, 小塚明朝 Std R
KozMinStdN-Regular, 小塚明朝 StdN R
4 Pro ProN KozMinPro-Regular, 小塚明朝 Pro R
KozMinProN-Regular, 小塚明朝 ProN R
5 Pr5 Pr5N KozMinPr5-Regular, 小塚明朝 Pr5 R
KozMinPr5N-Regular, 小塚明朝 Pr5N R
6 Pr6 Pr6N KozMinPr6-Regular, 小塚明朝 Pr6 R
KozMinPr6N-Regular, 小塚明朝 Pr6N R
7 Pr6 Pr6N KozMinPr6-Regular, 小塚明朝 Pr6 R
KozMinPr6N-Regular, 小塚明朝 Pr6N R

もちろん、このフォント名の問題についてすべてのフィードバックを歓迎する。

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