Posts in Category "Unicode"

A Forthcoming Registry & Ordering: Adobe-KR-6

Posted on October 1, 2017 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

It is difficult to imagine that it has been over 20 years since a new RO—or Adobe CID-keyed glyph set—was born. Of course, I am referring to the static glyph sets, not the ones based on the special-purpose Adobe-Identity-0 ROS.

“RO” stands for Registry and Ordering, which represent compatibility names or identifiers for CID-keyed glyph sets that are referred to as character collections. Adobe CID-keyed glyph sets are usually referred to as ROSes, with the final “S” being an integer that refers to a specific Supplement. The first Supplement, of course, is 0 (zero).

One of my recent projects is to revitalize and modernize our Korean glyph set, Adobe-Korea1-2 (see Adobe Tech Note #5093), which was last modified on 1998-10-12 by defining Supplement 2 that added only pre-rotated versions of the proportional and half-width glyphs that are referenced by the effectively-deprecated 'vrt2' (Vertical Alternates and Rotation) GSUB feature. Instead of defining a new Supplement, I decided that it would be better to simply define a completely new glyph set for a variety of reasons. The tentative Registry and Ordering names are Adobe and KR (meaning “Adobe-KR”), and unlike other ROSes for which Supplements are defined incrementally, my current plan is to simultaneously define seven Supplements, 0 through 6.
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Internationalization & Unicode Conferences

Posted on September 22, 2017 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

I have attended every Internationalization & Unicode Conference (IUC) since IUC31 in 2007, and Adobe has been a continuous Gold Sponsor since IUC31. Unfortunately, duty calls, in the form of attending and hosting IRG #49 that takes place during the same week as IUC41, which means that I can neither attend nor present this year. Of course, Adobe continues to be a Gold Sponsor of this important event.
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“Houston, we have a problem… …with U+2F9B2”

Posted on September 4, 2017 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

U+2F9B2 䕫 is a CJK Compatibility Ideograph, and like all CJK Compatibility Ideographs, it canonically decomposes to a CJK Unified Ideograph, and also has a Standardized Variation Sequence (SVS) that uses its canonical equivalent as its base character. This character also has a single source reference, H-8FA8, which corresponds to HKSCS (Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set) 0x8FA8.

So, what’s the problem? Put simply, its canonical equivalent, U+456B 䕫, is neither in HKSCS nor in its Big Five subset:

If this character is ever normalized—regardless of the normalization form—it is converted to its canonical equivalent, U+456B 䕫, which is not likely to be included in fonts that are designed for use in Hong Kong SAR. Furthermore, even if its SVS, <U+456B,U+FE00>, is used, there is a similar problem in that its base character is also not likely to be present in fonts that are designed for use in Hong Kong SAR.
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The Tale of Three PRIs

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

There has been a flurry of IVD (Ideographic Variation Database) activity this year.

First, UTS #37 (Unicode Ideographic Variation Database) was updated at the end of January to allow characters with the “Ideographic” property to serve as valid base characters in an IVS (Ideographic Variation Sequence). This effectively means that the Tangut (西夏文) and Nüshu (女书/女書) scripts can now participate in the IVD.
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HKSCS-2016 & Adobe-CNS1-7

Posted on July 4, 2017 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (1)

Unlike Unicode, which has been on an annual release cycle from Version 7.0, mainly to provide predictability to the release schedule for the benefit of developers, national standards—particularly East Asian ones—are updated much less frequently.

The latest East Asian national standard to be updated is HKSCS (Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set). HKSCS-2016, the fifth version of this particular standard, was published in May of 2017. As a result, and for the benefit of font developers whose fonts are based on Adobe’s public glyph sets, I used the morning of 🇺🇸’s Fourth of July of this year to publish Adobe-CNS1-7 via the CMap Resources open source project.
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When Simplified Chinese Isn’t Exactly Simplified

Posted on May 31, 2017 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (1)

Er, um, oops.

✨🙈✨🙉✨🙊✨

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Source Han Unicode

Posted on May 10, 2017 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (1)

One of my hobbies is apparently to explore various ways to stress-test Adobe products, and the target of today’s article happens to be recent adventures with Adobe InDesign and our Source Han families.

The background is that I produced Unicode-based glyph synopses as part of the Source Han Sans and Source Han Serif releases, but those PDFs show only up to 256 code points per page, and it takes several hundred pages to show their complete Unicode coverage. I also produced single-page PDFs that show all 65,535 glyphs. A Source Han Sans one is available here, and a Source Han Serif one is available here. However, they are not Unicode-based.
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Source Han Sans vs Source Han Serif

Posted on May 8, 2017 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (9)

At seemingly every opportunity, whether via this blog or during public speaking engagements, I have made it abundantly clear that the Adobe-branded Source Han families share the same glyph set as the corresponding Google-branded Noto CJK families. That is simply because it is true. What requires a bit of explanation, however, is how the two typeface designs—Source Han Sans and Source Han Serif—differ. That is what this particular article is about.

As the Project Architect of these Pan-CJK typeface families, I have my fingers on all of the data that was used during their development, and for preparing each release. I can therefore impart some useful tidbits of information that cannot be found elsewhere.
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Designing & Implementing Biáng

Posted on April 8, 2017 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (2)

Besides being the world’s first open source serif-style Pan-CJK typeface families, the Adobe-branded Source Han Serif and the Google-branded Noto Serif CJK also represent the first broad deployment of two highly-complex and related ideographs that are in the process of being encoded. Their glyphs are shown above in all seven weights. Although it may be hard to believe, the fourth line illustrates the simplified version.
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Source Han Serif / Noto Serif CJK History & Development

Posted on April 3, 2017 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (10)

Or, perhaps more accurately, the project that has been keeping me busy for the past couple of years.

The Adobe-branded Source Han Serif (named 源ノ明朝 in Japanese, 본명조 in Korean, 思源宋体 in Simplified Chinese, and 思源宋體 in Traditional Chinese) and Google-branded Noto Serif CJK open source Pan-CJK typeface families, which represent the serif-style counterparts to the similarly-named and also open source Source Han Sans and Noto Sans CJK Pan-CJK typeface families, were released on 2017-04-03. You can read more about the Source Han Serif release here (日本語—한국어—简体中文—繁體中文), which includes a six-minute promotional video.

This article provides information that you would not expect to find in the official announcements for Source Han Serif or Noto Serif CJK, mainly because such information is intended for a completely different audience, which is primarily comprised of font developers.

Unless noted otherwise, all further references to Source Han Serif or Source Han Sans will apply to Noto Serif CJK or Noto Sans CJK, respectively.
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