Re: [Freetype] Can I use True Type korean Fonts in the Microwindow ?

[Vadim Plessky]

On Monday 30 December 2002 04:52, Pedriana, Paul wrote:
|  See here for a list of Microsoft fonts and their supported languages,
|  see this:
|  http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/xpreski
|  t/html/inte03.asp
|
|  While investigating Asian fonts for use in my most recent app, I found
|  that many (all?) of these Microsoft fonts actually seem to be based on
|  fonts from other vendors. The difference is that Microsoft has taken
|  these and added a great deal of hinting. For example, Microsoft has a
|  Korean font called Gulim that is a very good Korean TrueType font. It
|  turns out that Gulim is identical to another font called "HYR Gothic"
|  originally made by HanYang Systems back around 1995. Identical except
|  that Gulim has good hinting added to it, whereas HYR Gothic doesn't. I
|  wonder if Microsoft bought the rights to HYR Gothic and simply hinted
|  it. I have seen this for other Asian fonts that Microsoft distributes as
|  well.

Arial and Times New Roman were developed by Monotype, but know as "Microsoft 
fonts".  Funny, isn't it?..

|
|  FYI, we've had a hard time coming up with fonts for use in game
|  software. This has been particularly true for Asian fonts because there
|  are so few selections. The problem is that we would like to use slightly
|  decorative fonts but need them to show well at smallish sizes on CRT/LCD
|  displays. Very few fonts are hinted enough for this. For "The Sims", we
|  use a bitmapped rip-off of Microsoft's "Comic Sans" font. People like to
|  hate this font, but it is well hinted for low resolutions and has just
|  the lighthearted look that we need. The only well-hinted Asian fonts I
|  have seen are those from Microsoft, and we can't distribute those with
|  our app. So what we do (for Korean) is check on startup for the presence
|  of Gulim on the user's computer and use it if present. If it is not
|  present, we use a distributable backup that comes with the app. Luckily,
|  virtually every Korean Windows computer has Gulim on it. The difference
|  in quality between Gulim and other fonts is so great that all other
|  fonts we showed the Korean QA team were deemed "unacceptable" for a
|  shipping Korean product. The world really needs open source well-hinted
|  Asian fonts. 

I guess someone from Asia should develop such fonts, no?
I can hardly imagine that someone from Europe or US would be able to design 
fonts with 20000 glyphs or more, to be used in Asia.

On the other hand, it can be that for Asian fonts stoke-based approach is a 
way to go.
Frankly speaking, Chinese font consist of hieroglyphs, not "glyphs", so it's 
somewhat wrong IMHO to mix glyph-based (English/Latin, Greek, Cyrillic) and 
hieroglyphs-based approach in one font.

| Every time somebody online reports that there is such a
|  thing, I investigate it and they are mistaken. :(
|
|  Paul
|  _______________________________________________
|  Freetype mailing list
|  address@hidden
|  http://www.freetype.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype

-- 

Vadim Plessky
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