Chinese novel typefaces

[lionfish]

hi ahi,

I usually use 华文中宋 as the main font, whether LRF or PDF. with Kai or FangSong as titles or book index etc. 华文中宋 looks a bit heavier than real book typefaces but quite pleasant on eInk screen. I have tried 10+ Ming/Song fonts and I think 华文中宋 gives the best, though not perfect, result. Another font called 方正书宋_GBK is also worth your consideration.

Both 华文中宋 and 方正书宋 comes with 10000+ characters and quite sufficient for general purposes. But if you want to present older books or poems, you might encounter missing character problems.

Unlike Ascii fonts, Chinese fonts with big character set are quite limited and you don't have too many selections there.

Attached is a pdf file I generated.

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by lionfish

hi ahi,

I usually use 华文中宋 as the main font, whether LRF or PDF. with Kai or FangSong as titles or book index etc. 华文中宋 looks a bit heavier than real book typefaces but quite pleasant on eInk screen. I have tried 10+ Ming/Song fonts and I think 华文中宋 gives the best, though not perfect, result. Another font called 方正书宋_GBK is also worth your consideration.

Both 华文中宋 and 方正书宋 comes with 10000+ characters and quite sufficient for general purposes. But if you want to present older books or poems, you might encounter missing character problems.

Unlike Ascii fonts, Chinese fonts with big character set are quite limited and you don't have too many selections there.

Attached is a pdf file I generated.

I was just measuring across your line and noticed you had 22 characters per horizontal on the screen, which is where the heavier (5-7pt) fonts start to improve in appearance, but Ming fonts start getting troublesome to read when characters (and their serifs) are that large relative to the page. For my Ming/Song fonts, I have been trying to use DynaComWare DFLiSong W5 (traditional), and I get fairly similar results. I think perhaps I'm just being a snob about e-ink and dislike the way it shows just about anything.

Problem is, do I set books with a typeface that is pleasant to read (Hei/Yuan) at reasonably small sizes on e-ink, or do I set books with a typeface that will be more appropriate to the material and perhaps readable in the future when screen technology improves? If typesetting a paper book the size of an e-ink screen, I'd have to use much lighter and smaller Ming faces to take advantage of Ming's readability.

Here's one more file with my clearest Ming (pg1) and clearest Kai (pg3) on e-ink. Both are usable I think, but I tend to scrutinize, and I don't like the way they look up close. They're also a bit bold-leaning which may be a problem at times. Again though, I'm only going off intuition...I've not seen any paragraph readability studies done in a manner that is relevant to this.

[lionfish]

For the current low contrast eInk screen, I think the only way to make text looks clearer is using heavier font. Although it is not a good mimic to physical book, it is still an acceptable compromise. I'm using an old 500 only, therefore I prefer using bigger font size and there are always complaints about it from other 505 users.

I personally dislike (actually hate is a better term) sans-serif chinese fonts like hei or yuan since they simply lost the Chinese character's feel and taste (calligraphy). But on the contrary some people are very fond of using MS YaHei instead of Ming/Song, so that is a very personal taste.

As for the future, since I always keep the source HTML and I can generate a new book within seconds so that's not my main concern.

Attached is a book using smaller font size which 505 users urged. It is 26 chars by 24 rows.

[chinesealbumart]

This is really cool stuff

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by lionfish

For the current low contrast eInk screen, I think the only way to make text looks clearer is using heavier font. Although it is not a good mimic to physical book, it is still an acceptable compromise. I'm using an old 500 only, therefore I prefer using bigger font size and there are always complaints about it from other 505 users.

I personally dislike (actually hate is a better term) sans-serif chinese fonts like hei or yuan since they simply lost the Chinese character's feel and taste (calligraphy). But on the contrary some people are very fond of using MS YaHei instead of Ming/Song, so that is a very personal taste.

As for the future, since I always keep the source HTML and I can generate a new book within seconds so that's not my main concern.

Attached is a book using smaller font size which 505 users urged. It is 26 chars by 24 rows.

I normally agree about hei/yuan characters, and I would much rather use a decent Ming or FangSong or Kai for books. Your ZhongSong is not too bad for a simplified face, and my LiSong is decent for a traditional one, but I don't think they're especially well-suited to e-ink at all. They're usable, and they still look a bit better than some traditional woodblock stuff (horrible readability), but at small sizes, the font is not very clear (and makes for a "clumpy" consistency to the text on the page), and makes me want to squint for more detail when the detail won't be found (in reasonably high-resolution printing, on the other hand, I can read quite small type without any such strain). When enlarged to make complex characters reasonably clear, the heavy weights and serifs almost seem to take over the page and compete for attention rather than gently direct it as lighter typefaces on paper do, especially since they tend to increase in contrast (stroke thickness difference) quickly The cwTeX Ming font is quite low contrast, which would probably be very good for e-ink if the font were a little heavier. A FangSong is a great compromise in theory (and I've seen some excellent printing done with it), but for some reason, looking at a FangSong on e-ink just makes me hate e-ink more.

I guess I'm really just being nit-picky about the whole thing, and keep swinging back to a yuan/hei font because I can read it without trying to see the detail of it. It makes gliding through text on e-ink far less straining than any of the others I've found, and as reluctant as I am to appreciate a sans-serif...it just seems to work best so far in this application. There may still be hope though for something else...

Damn snobbery...but damn e-ink even more.

[lionfish]

I admit that ZhongSong is far from perfect. I think the resolution of eInk screen is high enough, it's dpi is much higher than that of a LCD monitor. The problem is it's black isn't black enough, especially for a single-pixel line which looks particularly faint. One solution for this is using a heavier Song with bigger font size. The other solution is using Hei/Yuan with normal font size. I prefer the first one since I haven't encounter the distraction or strain you mentioned. On the other hand, the bigger fonts make my eyes feel more comfortable. The drawback is that it loses a real physical book feel.

Let's wait for a perfect screen.