The long process of creating a Chinese font • Hacker News Board

Re: The long process of creating a Chinese font

#51

Post by ttflee » Sun, Dec 20, 2015, 7:06 AM UTC

jessriedel wrote: post #42

dheera wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To a great extent it exists because of cultural inertia. The English language has a huge number of inconsistencies as well, especially in spelling; far more inconsistent than, say, Spanish, which is highly phoenetically-consistent. But nobody is editing the English language because their edited version of the langauge wouldn't fly in a formal setting. So even if English or Chinese could be made better, it's not going…

OK, but the major advantage you've suggested for Chinese typography, that the meaning of written words drifts much less over hundreds of year by allowing fast-change sound to change independently, is much less valuable today, right? Modern tech means we expect less drift overall, and less problems for a given amount of drift. Furthermore, the cost of drift is not felt by the people using the language at the time, so…

But why all those emojis after all?

Re: The long process of creating a Chinese font

#52

Post by keithnoizu » Sun, Dec 20, 2015, 1:18 PM UTC

That seems like something you could partially mitigate by vectorizing fonts and applying transformation and brush stroke rules to generate a base font you could then tweak as appropriate. Eg. Rules for how pronounced curves should be, serifs, spacing. Etc.

Re: The long process of creating a Chinese font

#53

Post by Ericson2314 » Sun, Dec 20, 2015, 7:52 PM UTC

be5invis wrote: post #34

Ericson2314 wrote: post #33

I've always hated the mingti--serif comparison. Mingti looks too artificial and beholden to technology (woodblock printing) for that to hold up. And kaiti likewise is too caligraphic and human to fit the bill either. With both of those constrained by their orignal medium enough to count as skeuomorphism---call me out on bias as a western or non-mason, but serifs don't evoke stone-inscribing as obviously to me---I was…

The shown one is some variant of Weibei (魏碑).

Thanks!

Re: The long process of creating a Chinese font

#54

Post by LiweiZ » Mon, Dec 21, 2015, 1:05 AM UTC

be5invis wrote: post #28

LiweiZ wrote: post #7

How about comparing with Japanese font? I worked in branding in China. I was told many modern inspirations are from Japanese work. IMHO as a Chinese, they generally have much better taste for art in China.

Most Chinese fonts contain more Han glyphs compared to Japanese, especially traditional. Most traditional Chinese fonts will have over 10,000 glyphs, while simplified are about 7,000. Many foundaries will create a even larger one, with over 22,000 glyphs in a single typeface.

If starting from scratch, yes, it could be very different and requires much more work. However, in many cases, I highly doubt this is what happened.

Re: The long process of creating a Chinese font

#55

Post by yeehong » Tue, Dec 22, 2015, 2:11 AM UTC

meric wrote: post #39

IgorPartola wrote: post #3

I know nothing of these subjects so I ask: is there any advantage to the typography and scrip system that is simplified Chinese vs a small alphabet a la Latin or Cyrillic?

Well, politically speaking a script system, by nature of its inertia, looks like it can hold a nation together a lot longer than Latin. Latin was the language of the Roman Empire, but evolution over the centuries means written Romance languages are no longer mutually intelligible. Today the former Roman Empire is split into dozens of states. Whereas, for Chinese, the number of states[1] is three. China, Taiwan, Singa…

Singapore is in South-East Asia, and was a English colony with massive Chinese immigrants. Singapore was never part of China.

Re: The long process of creating a Chinese font

#56

Post by meric » Tue, Dec 22, 2015, 9:33 AM UTC

yeehong wrote: post #55

meric wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, politically speaking a script system, by nature of its inertia, looks like it can hold a nation together a lot longer than Latin. Latin was the language of the Roman Empire, but evolution over the centuries means written Romance languages are no longer mutually intelligible. Today the former Roman Empire is split into dozens of states. Whereas, for Chinese, the number of states[1] is three. China, Taiwan, Singa…

Singapore is in South-East Asia, and was a English colony with massive Chinese immigrants. Singapore was never part of China.

Right, I was speaking in the contextual assumption where people with a common written language tended to congregate into the same "sphere", make it more likely they'll join into the same state at some point - and by Chinese I meant there are three Chinese language speaking states. The word "split" is applied to Europe, and not China. I added Singapore to make my case more "conservative".