Comment 23 for bug 206018

Arne Goetje wrote:
> Wenzhuo Zhang wrote:
>> OK, let me summarize my arguments agaist using Zen Hei as the default
>> Chinese font under current circumstances:
>
>> 1. Blurry strokes of truetype fonts.
>
> If you turn off anti-aliasing, the strokes will look much uglier,
> because the fonts don't contain hints and the autohinter is doing a bad
> job on CJK fonts. Also the embedded bitmap glyphs are enforced for 9pt
> to 12pt size. Therefor the is only blurry for sizes <9pt and >12pt. But
> it looks better than with anti-aliasing turned off.

I understood this before adding my previous comment. I meant the strokes
are unacceptably blurry when embedded bitmap glyphs were not enforced
for sizes between 9pt to 12pt inclusive. I don't care much about other
font sizes because they are not seen often.

>> 2. Missing 14px bitmap font.
>
> Has been solved with the latest update. 13px fonts are used instead,
> which is what you also see in UMing. In fact, 11/12px, 13/14px and
> 15/16px are the same.

Are you sure? Please download UMing10px-15px.htm below and open it using
firefox. Fonts obviously become bigger as font size increases.

>> 3. No pre-designed bold face, and either xft or freetype make a mess
> of the strokes of complex and not-so-complex characters.
>
> None of the CJK fonts available has pre-designed bold faces. So the
> rendering issue applies to all of them.

Perhaps I was biased when comparing bold faces of the two fonts.

>> 4. Ubuntu has come a long way to achieve the visual effect of Chinese
> characters as seen in Gutsy and Hardy beta Desktop CD, which is already
> quite satisfactory (I think). No need to make radical changes at
> present, which is seemingly a step backward.
>
> At that time no other decent font was available. But I always disliked
> to have UMing for both serif and sans-serif. Simply because Uming does
> not fit to other sans-serif fonts. Similarly I also don't agree with
> making ZenHei being chosen as serif, because it doesn't fit.

You are right that serif Chinese fonts don't fit with sans-serif fonts
of other languages. But serif and sans serif Chinese fonts don't belong
together on one web page as well. I think the latter is more important
for Chinese users. With current font settings, UMing and ZenHei tend to
mix up in one page. Clicking on a UMing link to open a ZenHei web page
is not something that looks quite right as well.

>> 5. Other packages, e.g. language-selector, still prefers Arphic UMing.
>
> No, they don't. We have space restrains on the Live CD, that's why we
> can only ship one font as the default Chinese font. The decision this
> time was made to keep UMing in place, because it's partly funded by
> Canonical (I'm the author of the UKai and Uming fonts and I got hired by
> Canonical partly to speed up development of these fonts). As ZenHei came
> around the corner, I took the opportunity to include it for sans-serif,
> because it has a fairly good Unicode coverage already and is actively
> developed. I had plans to create my own HeiTi font, but as it looks like
> now, I'm more likely to collaborate with WQY to improve the ZenHei font.
> However, I hope that in future UMing can be used for both Chinese and
> Japanese desktops, so that we can kick out the Kochi Mincho font, which
> is a real hog. If ZenHei can be accepted by the Japanese user community,
> then it maybe can replace the Kochi Gothic font on the CD.

I said language-selector prefers UMing because it doesn't add Zen Hei to
the alias list for Simplified Chinese Windows fonts. If you decide to
keep Zen Hei as the default font for sans-serif and monospace only, please
at least have 30-cjk-aliases.conf.diff above applied so that UMing and
ZenHei have less chances to show side by side on one page.

>> 6. Although both adopts Firefly's bitmaps as you said, Zen Hei just
> lacks the professional touches of Uming, IMHO.
>
> ZenHei has been touched much more professionally than UMing. The bitmaps
> in UMing have not been modified for the CJK glyphs. They are the
> original Firefly bitmaps and only cover Big5 and GB2312. All additional
> glyphs don't have bitmaps at all, simply because I don't have enough
> time to do it myself. Also I cannot import the WQY bitmaps, because of
> license issues. The UMing font is APL, the WQY fonts are GPL.

Perhaps the serifs of UMing catch my eyes so that I feel that UMing looks
better and professional. I cannot still get used to Zen Hei. Moreover, GB2312
and Big5 covers enough characters for the daily computing of most Chinese
users.

> But let me stress it one more time: none of the existing CJK fonts is
> perfect, all have some pros and cons. However, at least the UKai/Uming
> and WQY fonts are actively maintained and will improve over time. But as
> any open-source project, we need contributers to do the work. If you
> want to help to improve the fonts, you are welcome to join the projects.

I cannot agree with you more on this point.

>> fangq, thank you for your hard work in creating the open source Zen Hei.
>> As I said in the bug description, it is an excellent new font. I am
>> reporting this bug from a user's perspective which, I believe, can
>> represent the opinions of a good portion of users. I wish Zen Hei and
>> font rendering libraries would further mature to a state that Zen Hei
>> can become a satisfactory default font for most Chinese users.
>
> Until now, you are the only one who complains. ;)

To tell you the truth, I put UMing and Zen Hei web page screenshots side
by side, and asked three people which one they prefer, each of them said
he/she likes UMing better. I didn't tell them my opinion beforehand.

Wenzhuo