Source Han Sans

chunshek

chunshek

Member
Hi Mike,

Adobe has just released a new open source pan-CJK font family called Source Han Sans. It is available in seven weights and provides for multiple orthographic variants (traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean):

http://blog.typekit.com/2014/07/15/introducing-source-han-sans/

I know you had already licensed the beautiful XinGothic family and are using the open source Source Sans family from Adobe for the current version of Pleco on iOS and Android. Just wanted to flag up this to you in case you haven't seen the news yet.

Chunshek
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Thanks - not quite as pretty as XinGothic but we could offer it as an alternate free download on iOS at least.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Now added as an optional add-on for Pleco 3.1.4 - my initial assessment that it's not as pretty as XG stands, but it's pretty close, and should at the very least considerably strengthen our negotiating position the next time our license for XG comes up for renewal :)
 
chunshek

chunshek

Member
That was quick! Thanks Mike -- I'll be looking forward to the update on the App Store!
 
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mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Actually now I'm not so sure - depending on user feedback to 3.1.4 we could potentially end up making this the default Chinese font in 3.2. The open-source nature is a huge advantage since it means we can easily hack together new characters as we need them.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
After some more intensive side-by-side comparison: not as pretty as XG, but indeed pretty close - some noticeably ugly characters like 乎 tip the scale in XG's favor.

Totally unusable on Android at the moment, though - metrics seem to be bugged.
 
chunshek

chunshek

Member
I noticed the same issue on Android. I will try to see if I can hack the font somehow to make it "work" in Android in the next day or two, as I am eager to load SHS into Pleco on my Nexus 5.

Regarding the looks of the two font families: you are right about XG being a prettier typeface. In my eyes 乎 in SHS doesn't look as nearly "ugly" as its version of 写...

I think another advantage that SHS can bring, apart from the possibility of hacking new characters, is that it allows for characters like 骨 or 過 to appear "correctly" in traditional Chinese -- e.g. 骨 bending to the right, 過 using ⻎ instead of ⻌ -- in a typeface with a comparable quality to XG overall, without having to resort to STHeiTi which is just not a good-looking font IMO. I understand the cost of licensing one set of XG in regular and bold is already exorbitant, let alone two! So I'm surprised and thankful that you even let Pleco users enjoy XG SC without having to pay for it. (Please don't mind that I get a little bit irked seeing 骨 or 過 "bending the other way" and riding on ⻌ -- that's my own personal problem with Hanzi simplification ;))

Thanks for looking into this, Mike. I can't comment you highly enough for the attention you pay to your customers and users!
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Actually that one we're already fixing - our license to XG includes a traditional-optimized version too, the problem is that they haven't yet finished the version of it for the bold weight that we use (W7), and since it has a limited character set and needs to fall back on the simplified version for full GB18030 coverage, mixing the closest weight they do have (W8) with the simplified font doesn't look very good. It sounds like it's going to be a few more months before they have that ready, so we'll most likely be offering that slightly-awkward mixed version with Pleco 3.1.4 (code has been in for a couple of releases now) and then replacing it with the perfectly matched W7 once it's available.
 
chunshek

chunshek

Member
Good lord how much did that license cost you!? :eek: How are you even able to give it out for "free"?!

This is very exciting! Many thanks! :)
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
They included that with our simplified license, actually. It wasn't cheap overall, but between the new type design and the greatly improved document reader / greater selection of monolingual dictionaries in 3.0 we felt that offering a gorgeous Chinese font was a worthwhile investment.
 
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