Source Han Sans Version 1.004 Update

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

Due to an inadvertent error on my part, the glyphs for the vertical-only kana were incorrect in Source Han Sans Version 1.002 (and, by extension, in Version 1.003 because there were no glyph changes). Many thanks to the person who identified and reported this issue, and I’d like to convey my sincere apologies to those who were affected by it.
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Introducing Source Han Code JP

Posted on June 11, 2015 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (1)

[This article was written by Masataka HATTORI (服部正貴) and translated into English by yours truly.]

Source Han Code JP（日本語メニューネーム：源ノ角ゴシック Code JP）は、自分がほしくて個人的にはじめたオープンソースプロジェクトでした。Source Han Sans（源ノ角ゴシック）と Source Code Pro をフォールバックするエディタで使うと、漢字・仮名とくらべ英数字が小さくなってしまい全体的に読みにくいと感じていました。そんなとき、友人のプログラマーから、日本語も使えてコーディングにも適したフォントはないか？と相談されて、これは自分で作ってしまえと考えました。

オリジナルの Source Code Pro は、600 ユニット字幅を採用した欧文専用のモノスペースフォントで、まぎらわしいアルファベットや数字をディスプレイで判別しやすくするために、文字のデザインが工夫されています。それを、Source Han Sans JP（源ノ角ゴシック JP）の日本語と合わせてもフィットするようにサイズやウエイトを調整しました。文字幅は 660 ユニットあたりがちょうど良いと思いました。もともと読みやすさの観点から半角欧文はすこしコンデンスすぎると感じていたので、思い切って 2/3（667 ユニット）字幅を採用することにしました。一般的な半角（500 ユニット字幅）の等幅フォントにくらべ、全角文字との正確なインデントには向きませんが、読みやすさを確保しつつ、使い方次第で様々な表現ができると思いました。Source Han Code JP は、オリジナルの Source Han Sans JP と同じ７ウェイトのファミリーですが、ウェイトを切り替えても文字列の長さは変わりません。

結果的に、日本語を含むプログラミングやマークアップなどソースコードの表示や編集に使用できる Adobe Source シリーズの派生フォントとして、Adobe Fonts GitHub サイトから公開することになりました。

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Source Han Sans Version 1.003 Update

Posted on June 9, 2015 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

Although it has been less than two months since the Source Han Sans Version 1.002 update was released, a Version 1.003 maintenance update was released on 2015-06-09 to address two particular issues. No glyphs nor Unicode mappings were added or modified.

Google’s corresponding Noto Sans CJK fonts, which continue to differ from Source Han Sans only by name, were also updated to Version 1.003 at the same time, and reflect the same changes.
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UTC (Unicode Technical Committee)

Posted on May 13, 2015 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

Contrary to the opinion of some of those who have never participated in a UTC (Unicode Technical Committee) meeting, whose attendees include representatives from companies, organizations, and even governments, along with individual members, all of whom share a strong passion for the continued development of The Unicode Standard (TUS), which has become the de facto way in which to represent digital text on virtually all modern devices. These representatives and individual members are world-class experts who are also incredibly sensitive to cultural and regional issues that affect the interpretation and usefulness of the standard, and do everything in their power to ensure that it is usable in the broadest possible way. No other character set standard can even come close to making such a claim.

To put this into perhaps better perspective, standard-wise, it takes a typical government entity years to accomplish what The Unicode Consortium accomplishes in only one year.
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Source Han Sans Version 1.002 Update

Posted on April 20, 2015 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (2)

The Source Han Sans Version 1.002 update was released on 2015-04-20, which involved turning a very large crank on something that has a very large number of moving parts. The updated region-specific subset OTFs are also available on Typekit via desktop sync.

Google’s corresponding Noto Sans CJK fonts, which differ from Source Han Sans only by name, were also updated to Version 1.002 at the same time, and reflect the same changes.
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Introducing IVS Test

Posted on April 5, 2015 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

Yesterday morning I came up with the idea to produce a font for testing the extent to which applications and other text-handling environments support IVSes (Ideographic Variation Sequences), and ended up devoting the better part of this Easter weekend assembling, testing, and releasing the font as open source on GitHub. The font is named IVS Test, and as usual for me, it is an Adobe-Identity-0 ROS CID-keyed OpenType/CFF font.
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GitHub Migration

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

I started the process of migrating to GitHub the font-related open source projects that I maintain, and recently finished. In some cases, the projects were split between SourceForge and GitHub, with the installable font resources (and sources) on the former, and only the sources on the latter. Some projects were available only on SourceForge.

There are a couple of motivations for this migration. First, GitHub provides a great user experience for posting, tracking, and responding to “Issues” for a project. In fact, I made good use of the mobile app for Android while vacationing in Wisconsin late last July. Second, we prefer the control that GitHub offers in terms of updating projects. I use the GitHub command-line tools, along with the SourceTree app for OS X, when initiating or updating projects on GitHub.
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1,111,998 to 1 → Adobe Blank 2

Posted on April 1, 2015 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

Well, it’s April 1st, which represents an ideal time to release and introduce Adobe Blank 2, which is a new version of the popular Adobe Blank font.
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Introducing Tombo SP (トンボ SP)

Posted on March 22, 2015 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

In early 2008, as part of writing and typesetting CJKV Information Processing, Second Edition and preparing the latest version of Adobe Tech Note #5078 (The Adobe-Japan1-6 Character Collection), I built a small—in terms of the number of glyphs—special-purpose font for displaying registration marks for glyphs, and named it Tombo. Such registration marks are incredibly useful for showing the relative position of a glyph within its em-box, and for conveying the visual horizontal advance (aka glyph width). The excerpt above shows this font’s use in the Source Han Sans ReadMe (note that the PDF file will download if clicked).
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To GB 18030, Or Not To GB 18030…

Posted on March 15, 2015 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

One of the questions one may ask about the Adobe-branded Source Han Sans and Google-branded Noto Sans CJK open source Pan-CJK typeface families is whether they are GB 18030–compliant. Compliant? Sort of. Certified? Not yet.

Let me explain…
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