More Fonts

Jxy

秀才
Today I just bought the Pleco Professional Bundle. Two things I was very excited about that comes with this bundle are the Kai Chinese and the Handwritten Xing fonts.
I was sad when I found out both of these fonts are based on the Mainland Chinese standard (id the upper component of 骨 is written with one stroke less (see image)), since I’m learning Traditional Chinese.
That’s why I’m requesting to add a Kaiti font based on the Taiwanese standard (since that’s the most common standard used among the people that use traditional Chinese).
And if possible, add a cursive / Xing font also based on the Taiwanese standard.
 

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Shun

状元
Hi Jxy,

that certainly is a very legitimate concern, though I would expect this means that Pleco would have had to license an additional Kaiti font, "Kaiti TC", the Traditional font which appears to fully conform to the Taiwanese standard, whereas the standard Kaiti font which includes both Simplified and Mainland Traditional script comes with iOS, free for apps to use. It appears that all of the more than 10 fonts that came preinstalled on my Mac that have "TC" in their name (such as "Kaiti TC" or "PingFang TC") do indeed have the inner corner in the 骨 character on the right side. As an illustrative example from my Mac:

Standard KaiTI and Kaiti TC.jpg


Of course, I would also welcome a choice between the different Traditional scripts on Pleco, provided it isn't too expensive for either Pleco or its users.

Regards,

Shun
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Thanks.

The basic problem here is that font licensing models really aren’t set up well for offering fonts as add-ons like we do. Pretty much the only way to license a Chinese font for use in an app is to either pay a big annual license fee or an even bigger one time fee, and those fees are at a scale that would make it pretty much impossible for us to cover the cost from sales of a Taiwan-optimized font; we’d have to charge some ludicrous price like $30 or $40 for one font just to break even. (we’ve never met a font foundry that would do a percentage or per-copy royalty, useful though that would be)
 

Jxy

秀才
Hey Mike!

Thanks for your reply! That’s understandable. I have one more question. Is it possible to add a feature (I believe android has as well) to make it possible to add and use custom fonts?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Is it possible to add a feature (I believe android has as well) to make it possible to add and use custom fonts?

We’re not planning to do direct loading of fonts, but we are planning to allow you to select fonts that you’ve installed systemwide - this will probably be an “expert mode only” feature in 4.0 though. (= may require you to own a particular add-on to unlock expert mode)
 

rizen suha

状元
system loaded fonts, awesome! even so and as said before, the current kai ti font is amazing, hope it will stay on board for ever. if there ever were a licensing issue, i for one would be "happy" to pay up. fonts are essential in chinese. a hanzi is a painting so better make it a good one.
 

Jxy

秀才
We’re not planning to do direct loading of fonts, but we are planning to allow you to select fonts that you’ve installed systemwide - this will probably be an “expert mode only” feature in 4.0 though. (= may require you to own a particular add-on to unlock expert mode)
Thanks for the fast reply, Mike. I’m looking forward to when that feature is added. Have a nice day!
 

Shun

状元
That's a very valuable hint—I wonder about that, as well. Perhaps the MoE font license is limited to non-commercial uses, which would preclude their free use in Pleco. (Their website is excruciatingly slow, so I couldn't check myself.) I imagine that Pleco have paid a small amount for the right to include the MoE dicts as free dicts, and for the MoE fonts to be used in a commercial product, the rate might be much higher. I could be wrong.

@mikelove: I would absolutely understand if most of these details are business secrets.

MOE has what I understand to be the standard TW-Kai and TW-Sung fonts available for download without payment, but I don't know much about licenses. If their dictionary license works, it's possible their font license would as well?

Have a nice evening,

Shun
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
We haven’t paid anything for the MoE dicts, but my understanding is that these fonts - unlike the MoE dicts - are licensed strictly for non-commercial use and so can’t be included in Pleco.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Honestly that whole paid font feature was kind of a waste, license-fee-wise, and we've mostly phased it out now - gone back to just offering Kai + YingBiXingShu, in anticipation of letting people choose anything they want from the system font library (including custom fonts they've installed) in 4.0.

The reason for the odd selection in the past was that we were mostly thinking of this as a way to learn to recognize characters in a bunch of different fonts.
 

caesartg

榜眼
We haven’t paid anything for the MoE dicts, but my understanding is that these fonts - unlike the MoE dicts - are licensed strictly for non-commercial use and so can’t be included in Pleco.
Hi Mike - I just checked and I think the licence [https://data.gov.tw/license] allows you to use it in Pleco - in other words, it looks like the files [https://data.gov.tw/dataset/5961] can be used for commercial use with attribution...

"2.1. The Data Providing Organization grants User a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free copyright license to reproduce, distribute, publicly transmit, publicly broadcast, publicly recite, publicly present, publicly perform, compile, adapt to the Open Data provided for any purpose, including but not limited to making all kinds of Derivative Works either as products or services."

1.4. “Derivative Work” means any adaptation based upon the Open Data provided under the License and in which the original data is reproduced, adapted, compiled, or otherwise modified.

I checked the Wayback Machine for the license terms and the data file page and it looks like no changes have been made since this thread.

Many of the world's Chinese language overseas study programmes seem to have moved to Taiwan. I've heard both teachers and students discussing the fonts issues at both of the programmes I attended. Students seem to like the kai fonts but end up being penalised for writing incorrectly (E.g. they write the "pu1" whip component in 條 and 修 as a "zhi3" foot component). I think it is negatively impacting how Pleco is viewed out here.

I managed to install the MoE's fonts and use them on Pleco Android but it doesn't seem possible on Pleco iOS. The MoE's kai font is very pleasing to the eye and I hope you can include it. It is also the font being used in the PAVC textbooks that the majority of the international students will be using to study Chinese in Taiwan.

Ben
 
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mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
That's odd, I very clearly remember seeing a warning about no commercial use before. It might be something I remembered from prior to this thread, though, or something attached to the same fonts when offered on another site.

At any rate, since they require code changes I don't think we're likely to add any new font downloads to 3.x on iOS at this point (and candidly, at least from the numbers we have - which I suppose could be distorted by some quirk of data collection and/or Apple appeasing their overlords - it seems like most of our Taiwan users are on Android), but since we do have to keep that font download mechanism in 4.0 to support people who bought add-on fonts before, we'll see about including this alongside our other Kai font in that.

In the meantime, while we don't have a TW-optimized Kai font, we do have a TW-optimized Song one - "Source Han Serif TWHK" in Add-ons / Features / Free Fonts.
 

caesartg

榜眼
That's odd, I very clearly remember seeing a warning about no commercial use before. It might be something I remembered from prior to this thread, though, or something attached to the same fonts when offered on another site.

At any rate, since they require code changes I don't think we're likely to add any new font downloads to 3.x on iOS at this point (and candidly, at least from the numbers we have - which I suppose could be distorted by some quirk of data collection and/or Apple appeasing their overlords - it seems like most of our Taiwan users are on Android), but since we do have to keep that font download mechanism in 4.0 to support people who bought add-on fonts before, we'll see about including this alongside our other Kai font in that.

In the meantime, while we don't have a TW-optimized Kai font, we do have a TW-optimized Song one - "Source Han Serif TWHK" in Add-ons / Features / Free Fonts.
Thanks Mike! My Android phone got busted so I decided to switch once again and bought a new iphone out here. Then when I was asked by IOS and various apps whether I would be happy to share info, I went with sharing as little as possible. I can't think why someone would volunteer to share if they are a normal user. So that might help explain the lack of data. The other thing is that I soon found the Taiwan app store lacked certain apps I use, so I switched my region. If your Taiwan iphone users are determined by those currently using the Taiwan app store, then I can imagine that would be an even bigger reason why you're not seeing that useage data - few overseas students coming here to study would switch app stores unless they had to for a certain app download and then would likely switch back quickly to their home region app store. So for me, although I'm in Taiwan, I'm on the UK app store. Just my two cents, in case it throws some light.

I'm going with the non-TW kai font for now and taking note of the dozens of differences and customising my cards to point them out - I just find the non kai font so ugly after using the TW Kai font on Android all this time. I'll try the non-Kai font again at some point and see if I can wean myself off Kai until you can add it to 4.
 
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mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Thanks - it's a couple of factors but we do see very little Taiwan App Store usage too.

But yeah, with 4.0 you can pick whatever English and Chinese fonts you like, from those downloaded into Pleco or installed elsewhere on your phone, and there's no longer any font-specific coding at all except for picking out font names for the character sampler feature, so it should be very easy to get TW Kai working to your satisfaction in that.
 
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