Subject: Re: font editors

From: "Martin J. Heijdra" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1993 09:13:15 EST

As far as I know, Fontographer can EDIT Chinese characters in TT and Post-
script format, as well as other usual font editors. BUT they cannot save
characters as a two-byte code. There simply is NO end-user program which
can do this. Some programs (Canvas, Japanese Freehand, CChedit etc., Kanji
Suck Pro) can create outlines from characters, to be worked with for logos
etc.

I had been looking for the same things. What I found is this: for bitmap
fonts, only Marukan editor, a Japanese program, can make 2-byte Japanese
fonts; there is a vendor version which can also make GB and Big-5 Chinese
fonts, as well as Korean; price: some $5,000... The same company (Enfour
Media Lab in Japan) has ways of ADDING TT and PS characters to an existing
font for Japanese. Rollup programs (the word for creating 2-byte full fonts
out of 1-byte Fontographer fonts) which include TT and PS fonts for Chinese
and Korean are simply completely out of reach for individuals: they are meant
for commercial vendors. For Japanese only, there is a "cheap"TT-Rollup version,
and a Sweet-Jam Rollup program; no Chinese, no Postscript.

Altsys will come out with a so-called "Altsys Rollup", Postscript, for making
a full 2-byte character font out of average Fontographer fonts. But the prices
I have seen (for vendors) are truly staggering. I read one report (in Lunde's b
ook) that an end-user version is under way; but pricewise, I'm not holding my
breath.

Martin Heijdra

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From: Dorothy Day <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 16:40:41 CDT

>Suck Pro) can create outlines from characters, to be worked with for logos

Actually, ChinaStar from JHL (an older program with around 40,000
characters on a ROM character generator card) has a CREATE program
that allows the user to select an existing 2-byte character and modify
it to create a new one, and save it under a new pseudo-Tsang-chieh
code. However, that's entirely a modified DOS environment that works
only with DOS 2.x or 3.x and surely can't be imported under Windows.
--But if it could be done once, it should be possible to do it again.

It's a shame that JHL never really made it. Their fonts were superb
for 24x24 bit, and the character generator card holds an extremely
gratifying number of traditional and simplified characters for the
scholar of Chinese history or traditional literature, but they were so
small and lacking in venture capital that they could never hire enough
programmers to develop even a decent word processing program to utilize
all that power. One of their founders (Chu Bang-fu) was the creator of
the Tsang-chieh character coding system, which he donated to the
public domain. (ChinaStar allows any transformation of inputting method
to use the underlying TS codes to get at the characters in ROM.)
I think they still exist, but ChinaStar is no longer a large part of
their business. Killed by their own generosity and high prices?

Dorothy Day, Indiana University
Bitnet: DAY@IUBACS
Internet: [email-masked]

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From: Stanley G Goertzen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1993 22:30:04 -600

Doug Schiffer <[email-masked]> wrote:

>Looking at various bitmapped Chinese fonts, it occurs to me that
>there's a lot of repetition in the characters.  Part of this stems
>from the 214 radicals, of course.  But there's a slightly larger set
>of "semi-radicals" that show up regularly.
> ....
>Even more intriguing would be this same process extended to rescaleable
>fonts.  The radicals could be designed as "subroutines" which would
>then be "called" by each character.

It should be possible to generate 50,000 plus Chinese characters  with as
few as 1161 scalable glyphs and a few algorithms.

A book  called the "Sound System  of the Guangyun"  (see reference below)
rearranges  some  26,000  character  entries  of  a  Sung  dynasty  rhyme
dictionary  by "phonetic" elements.  There are 947 some phonetic elements
in  this analysis.   Combined  with the  214 Kangxi  dictionary "radical"
elements,  it  would  be theoretically  possible to  create  over 200,000
characters:

(214 "radicals") * (947 "phonetic" elements)  =3D  202,658 possible
combinations!

Needless to say,  not all of these possible combinations  actually occur;
but  you  would  need only  (947+214)  or  1161  outline  glyphs and  the
associated algorithms to combine and scale them  into pixel matrices.  It
seems to me it  shouldn't be that  difficult.  Some  of the matrices  are
more complicated than  others, but they are relatively few  in number and
it should not be too difficult to define them mathematically.  By far the
majority of characters are divided into two parts: "radical" on the left,
"phonetic" on the right.

It would be  the most efficient and productive character  creation system
yet devised.  If I were better in math and had the time,  I'd surely like
to look into this myself;  but I seem to recall reading somewhere  that a
similar   project  was  already  under   consideration  somewhere,  maybe
Stanford?  Does anyone know about this?

Reference:
Guangyun Shengxi ("Sound System of the Guangyun  rhyme dictionary"), Shen
Jianshi, editor, Beijing, 1945, 1960, reprinted by various publishers.
(e.g., Chung Hwa Book Co., Taipei, 1969, ...)
[=B3=C1]=BC=E6=CA=BF, =B9=E3=D4=CF=C9=F9=CF=B5.

Stanley Goertzen
[email-masked]