So how do people like new PingFang font?
- Thread starter etm001
- Start date
Carl Nilsson
进士
Why is that?
From my limited exposure and based solely on appearance I think it is my favorite Chinese sans typeface.
Shun
状元
I also wouldn't recommend it for a beginning student, because some characters aren't represented exactly as in schoolbooks. For example, 田 has two vertical lines on the sides that protrude down in an exaggerated way. It just sometimes gives the student the wrong idea of what a character should look like. So the design is very nice, but a little exaggerated at times.
PingFang takes some design liberties that could be confusing to a beginner. Fonts like it are not likely to be found in a beginner's textbook. Also, thinking back to when I first learned stroke order and how to write basic characters, I'm 100% sure my teacher would have marked certain characters as "wrong" had I written them as they are represented in PingFang. I say "wrong" only in the sense that we want beginners - whether in the Chinese or any other language - to acquire competency writing and recognizing the fundamental form of a letter or character. Once a student has acquired that, then they can take more liberties when writing (as attested by the incomprehensible Chinese handwriting I often see, lol), and they will have no less difficulty reading fonts like PingFang. That said, I read traditional characters, and there have been a few times where I saw a character in PingFang and thought, "Hmmm, is that where that stroke goes?"
I just don't like it.
@Shun - thanks! Very similar to STHeiti, no?
@sobriaebritas - any other modern Hei fonts you like better?
@sobriaebritas - any other modern Hei fonts you like better?
Carl Nilsson
进士
Ok, I understand what you meant now by not being beginner friendly; I thought you were comparing it to other heiti typefaces, not to kaiti. (Since all heiti fonts in Pleco have the same "problems" that you mentioned for 田 and 车).
Carl Nilsson
进士
By the way, are there any plans to make it possible to select the thickness (in addition to normal and bold). I really like the thin version of it that seems to be the default in iBooks.
@Carl Nilsson - Possibly, we've had a few other requests for that.
Song/kaiti looks elegant and good for learning writing character.
However for smaller texts (e.g. list, definitions), heiti has better readability, so I ended up using heiti except for the ios reader.
It would be nice if can set the font style for the headword separately, or maybe just use the most beginner friendly font by default for headwords.
However for smaller texts (e.g. list, definitions), heiti has better readability, so I ended up using heiti except for the ios reader.
It would be nice if can set the font style for the headword separately, or maybe just use the most beginner friendly font by default for headwords.
Hi, I hope it's ok to bring back to life this old thread 
I have started learning chinese and one of the areas I will try to learn is chinese simplified characters, mainly to improve my reading comprehension but also to immerse myself more into the chinese culture/essence
An educational e-book I started reading that is in english and often show some chinese characters examples was not displaying the chinese characters so that's how I found out that not all fonts in my E-Reader will work well.
Trying to figure out which font I should download for my E-Reader I thought "let's take a look at what font Pleco uses" and I checked in my iphone app(I haven't used Pleco yet but I installed it because it was highly recommended) and I saw the default font is PingFang SC.
I googled it and found this thread in which several experienced people mention that it is not a good font for beginners.
If PingFang SC is not a good choice for a beginner, can anybody suggest which fonts are recommended(Simplified characters)?
Also, will I be able to change Pleco's default font to this other more beginner friendly font, now it doesn't seem to have any other choice except the PingFang TC which I understand is the same font but for traditional characters?
Thank you very much in advance for any help,
BoGa/NiCo
I have started learning chinese and one of the areas I will try to learn is chinese simplified characters, mainly to improve my reading comprehension but also to immerse myself more into the chinese culture/essence
An educational e-book I started reading that is in english and often show some chinese characters examples was not displaying the chinese characters so that's how I found out that not all fonts in my E-Reader will work well.
Trying to figure out which font I should download for my E-Reader I thought "let's take a look at what font Pleco uses" and I checked in my iphone app(I haven't used Pleco yet but I installed it because it was highly recommended) and I saw the default font is PingFang SC.
I googled it and found this thread in which several experienced people mention that it is not a good font for beginners.
If PingFang SC is not a good choice for a beginner, can anybody suggest which fonts are recommended(Simplified characters)?
Also, will I be able to change Pleco's default font to this other more beginner friendly font, now it doesn't seem to have any other choice except the PingFang TC which I understand is the same font but for traditional characters?
Thank you very much in advance for any help,
BoGa/NiCo