Small seal script for Pleco Reader

[sparkly12345]

Figured out a way to use 小篆 xiao zhuan in pleco's reader. the font selection is bugged on pleco (or maybe iOS?) which seems to actually work in my favor since it allowed me to select two different fonts to supplement each other. I used the "Fonty" app to install one of the fonts ($2), and I found HOT-SyotenStd-L online. The second font can be installed for free with that app, but you need to enable network permissions when it prompts you to. I just wish there was a way to see these font's outside the reader as well.

 

[mikelove]

Sorry, could you be a little more specific about the bug? You're not able to select the font at all?

 

[sparkly12345]

Sorry, could you be a little more specific about the bug? You're not able to select the font at all?

HOT-SyotenStd-L is a Chinese font as well but it's not selectable in the Chinese font area only in the A-Z font. but I think this might have to do more with apple, I'm not sure. Fonts on iPhone are prohibitively difficult to install and seem to have limited support. Have you considered maybe licensing a seal script font for Pleco, or having an option for a user to buy it? There are some free license one's available as well. Or better yet the ability to import one's own fonts in Pleco.

 

[mikelove]

There's an option in Settings / Miscellaneous to ignore the system font languages, turn that on and it should let you select it. (Apple have deprecated the option to filter fonts by languages anyway - I guess they gave up on trying to make it work well - so that option is going to be the default in the next beta)

We actually used to offer a seal script font as a paid add-on, but not enough people bought it to cover the license fee.

 

[sparkly12345]

Wow! this has made things a lot easier for me! that's too sad to hear about the add-on. maybe pleco could offer it's own seal script font, or see if other foundries are willing to license for a lower price? I feel like recently there has been an uptick in interest in paleography, so maybe people would be just a tiny little bit more interested? Also everytime i select the EBAS font to switch it out, it crashes the app.

and on an unrelated note, could you add Dong Chinese to the external links, like where ZDIC and Wiktionary are?

 

[sparkly12345]

and could you please make the fall back on the reader prefer the system default font, if system default is not selected? it seems to be falling back to an arial style font, when changing fonts, despite the fact that my system font can support that character.

 

[sparkly12345]

alternatively, if system fonts could be ranked, where fonts fall back in an order. I have multiple seal script fonts, some of them support traditional, some of them support simplified, some of them support non shuowen characters 嗎她, but the way it's set up right now, i kind of have to select just one.

 

[sparkly12345]

alternatively, if system fonts could be ranked, where fonts fall back in an order. I have multiple seal script fonts, some of them support traditional, some of them support simplified, some of them support non shuowen characters 嗎她, but the way it's set up right now, i kind of have to select just one.

Wow, i've figured out that it's already a thing, but just for the reader not system wide. would be nice to make it system wide as well.

 

[mikelove]

Wow, i've figured out that it's already a thing, but just for the reader not system wide. would be nice to make it system wide as well.

Possible, but to be honest it's going to work a lot better if you use a font utility to combine them all into a single font. (the 'mergefonts' tool in Adobe's free AFDKO might be a big help there) The performance impact of Pleco having to scan through half a dozen Chinese font files to see if each of them has a glyph for a particular code point is... not great; we mitigate some of that with caching, but even so, the fewer Chinese fonts, the better. Also, the metrics don't always line up perfectly so sometimes you get characters jumping around a bit.

and on an unrelated note, could you add Dong Chinese to the external links, like where ZDIC and Wiktionary are?

You can add whatever external links you like in Settings / System & External / System / External Lookups.

 

[sparkly12345]

I'll try that out thanks！