Re: Asian language fonts?

[Anthony Fok]

On Thu, Jul 20, 2000 at 04:25:31PM -0700, Pedriana, Paul wrote:
> Can somebody tell me why every time somebody 
> releases one of those Asian fonts the western 
> characters in those fonts (i.e. "a, b, c") 
> look so butt-ugly!?

I share your sentiments.

However, also remember the constraints that they have to work with. 
Those western glyphs are supposed to be monospaced.  The halfwidth
ones must have a width exactly half of a Chinese glyphs, i.e. half
a square.  Then, there are the fullwidth ones that have to fill a
square exactly.  That is so that everything would align nicely on, say,
a 80x24 or 80x25 text console or terminal window.

These are some of the reasons.  Nonetheless, please do give them a
break.  Arphic Technology and Dr. Wang have generously donated the
fonts under a free software license (Arphic Public License and the GNU
GPL) to the Free Software and the Open Source Software community. 
Besides, I haven't seen any other CJK fonts where the western glyphs
are any prettier.

Regards,

Anthony

-- 
Anthony Fok Tung-Ling                Civil and Environmental Engineering
address@hidden, address@hidden    University of Alberta, Canada
Debian Chinese Project -- http://www.debian.org/international/chinese/
Come visit Our Lady of Victory Camp -- http://www.olvc.ab.ca/