Problem with Chinese font

FontCreator - Font Editor FontCreator - Support
1

I’ve encountered a problem with the font width for Chinese fonts as follows: (On Vista SP1)

  1. Load an exisitng Chinese .TTF font into Font Creator (say msyh.ttf under Vista’s Font folder).
  2. Give it a different name (via AutoNaming…) and then save the file to a different location. (That is, there is no modification, just duplicating.)
  3. Install the newly saved font into the Font folder.
  4. Open MS Word, and the newly installed font does show up in the font list.
  5. Type some Chinese characters with the newly installed font set.
  6. All Chinese characters are shown with extra “space” to their right. The extra space appears to be of identical width as the original character, making each character taking double the width it should’ve taken. This appears to only affect Chinese characters (all non-Chinese characters in the same font are fine.)

Here is the screen shot from MS Word:
Issue.jpg
Is this a known issue with Chinese characters, or is there a workaround?

Thanks!
Pai-Hung

2

Could anyone help me with this?

Thanks!
Pai-Hung

3

Or maybe this only works in non-trivial version of FontCreator? If someone could try the repro steps for, I’d much appreciated. (I am currently evaluating with the trial version of FontCreator.)

Thanks!
Pai-Hung

4

The trial version is the same as the professional vesion except that it will only work for 30 days. So that difference would not be the problem.

Chinese fonts are not supplied with Microsoft Windows in Europe.

I noticed the file name msyh.ttf and searched for it on the web.

I found the following.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_YaHei

There are some external links to Microsoft web pages so maybe some of us can get the font and have a go at the problem.

The problem mentions Vista SP1. I am using Windows xp so that difference means that I cannot totally do the test myself.

William Overington

22 November 2008

5

Have you tried the Code2000 font?

The reason that I suggest that font is because some of the Microsoft fonts may have extra features in them such as bitmaps so as to display Chinese characters at small sizes, yet as far as I know Code2000 is an OpenType font.

http://www.code2000.net/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code2000

William Overington

22 November 2008

6

I do have that font file on my Windows Vista PC. I’ve followed the instructions to reproduce the problem, but it works just fine. Could you send the font file to me?

7

You can try the following Chinese font:

http://cle.linux.org.tw/fonts/truetype/bkai00mp.ttf

8

No problem with that font file either. Maybe I’m trying with another set of characters, so much to choose from :slight_smile:

Can you please upload a document with a line of text that shows the problem?

9

I did notice that the bkai00mp.ttf file responded within FontCreator 5.6 to Format Naming… Macintosh Roman with a display of empty fields.

William Overington

24 November 2008

10

At one point I might have suggested that justification was turned on and trying to equally space the letters.

Does it exhibit the same qualities with NotePad or some other application than MS Word?

11

Hmm, I just tried but couldn’t repro with that font anymore. (It’s a trivial repro for me last night…)

One possibility is that it repros with
TrueType1.jpg
but not
TrueType2.jpg
. Could someone advise why there may be two different icons shown for the .TTF files?

12

The first symbol is for Digitally signed OpenType fonts while the second is for Truetype Fonts or unsigned OpenType Fonts.

13

So both OpenType and TrueType font have the same .TTF file extension?

14

Some OpenType fonts (e.g. mine) have OpenType features and an OTF extension, but they are not digitally signed, so they don’t have the O icon. At least, I think that’s how it works.

How it may affect your problem I am not sure. It may be that some tables are lost when saving OpenType fonts as Truetype. Font Creator can open OpenType fonts, but it saves them as Truetype. See Tools, Options, Font.

15

I think that the situation is that some OpenType fonts may be either .OTF or .TTF at the choice of the font producer.

There are some notes about filenames for OpenType fonts on the following web page.

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/otff.htm

As a side note, there is mention of “CFF data” with no explanation of the meaning of the term. However, I found mention of Adobe Technical Note #5176: “The Compact Font Format Specification.” on the http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/otover.htm page with an active link to obtaining a copy of it. However, for the present purposes of this thread it appears that one simply needs to know that “CFF data” is something different from TrueType outlines.

The following notes with links about OpenType are added in case they might be useful.

An overview of OpenType.

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/otover.htm

The OpenType specification starts on the following page.

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/default.htm

There is also the following page.

http://www.adobe.com/type/opentype/

William Overington

25 November 2008

16

I suggest you read this a discussion about the difference between TrueType and OpenType.