CJKV Information Processing, 2nd Edition

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CHAPTER 6

Font Formats, Glyph Sets, and Font Tools

One of the most important considerations in displaying or printing CJKV text is the avail-

ability of appropriate fonts. Fonts form the most basic foundation of document writing

and text input—no matter which writing system is involved—and are available in a wide

variety of formats, though OpenType has clearly emerged as the preferred format. One

could argue that a fully functional CJKV-capable application is completely worthless and

meaningless without adequate font support.

*

Although the internal representation of the

glyphs in these formats, which can range from bitmapped patterns to outline descriptions,

may dier considerably, the nal result, whether printed, displayed, or otherwise output-

ted, is simply an organized collection of bits or pixels. is is a very important point, so let

me reiterate: regardless of the format a font happens to be, the nal result consists of nothing

but BDPs.

†

Typical CJKV fonts include glyphs for the characters that correspond to the most com-

mon character set standards for a given locale. Nearly 20 years ago, for example, Japanese

fonts that included glyphs for JIS X 0208:1997 Level 2 kanji were relatively uncommon,

but now you can start expecting to nd font products that include glyphs for the char-

acters in CJK Unied Ideographs Extension B. However, the 64K glyph barrier—an im-

portant ...