rcd@violet.isc.COM (Dick Dunn) (08/04/87)
Belated semi-answer to a recent question about fonts for Japanese-- There are <standard> bitmap representations for many Japanese characters. There is a Japanese standard for a character set which includes somewhat over 6000 kanji (ideographic) characters, plus katakana and hiragana (phonetic) "alphabets", Roman, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets, and a fair complement of special characters. This seems to be generally known as the "JIS character set." There are also standards which specify bitmaps for the representation of each character in JIS. Two resolutions are available--16x16 and 24x24 pixels per character. (The aspect ratio for kanji is 1:1.) Thus, if you want to display or print kanji, you should try to get these bitmaps. Unless you have background in both font design and Japanese writing, it is probably a bad idea to try to do your own fonts, since there are characters which look nearly alike to the untrained eye. [As I "read" the JIS character set standard, there appear to be notes indicating characters which might be mistaken for one another.] There isn't a lot of room in a 24x24 character cell to show the complexity of a kanji which might have 20 or more strokes in it. So where the approximation to a character may be rough, if you follow a standard at least you know you're getting the same rough approximation as everyone else. The relevant standards are: JIS C 6226: "Code of the Japanese Graphic Character Set for Information Interchange" JIS C 6232: "16-dots Matrix Character Patterns for Display Devices" JIS C 6234: "24-dots Matrix Character Patterns for Dot Printers" So the next question is: Where can one find public-domain machine-readable forms of the data in 6232 and 6234? I don't know. I'd assume they exist just because it's in the interests of promotion of standards to have them. (It is NOT feasible to enter them by hand from the standard--there are some 7000 characters overall!) Caveats: The standards are published in Japanese--there are English titles as reproduced above, but that's about it. I don't know Japanese and I haven't worked on the issues of printing it. It's an interesting set of problems, though. -- Dick Dunn {hao,nbires,cbosgd}!ico!rcd (NOT CSNET!) (303)449-2870 ...Keep your day job 'til your night job pays.
"Dennis_G._Frahmann.ESCP8"@XEROX.COM (08/06/87)
If you are interested in an English-language document that covers the Japanese Industrial Standard Code (JIS-C-6226), the Xerox Character Code Standard has mapped Kanji in accordance with JIS-C-6226 and documents that mapping in the Xerox Character Code Standard (XSIS 058404 ). This document can be purchased for $25 from the Xerox Systems Institute, 475 Oakmead Parkway, Sunnyvale, CA 94086, (408) 737-4652. Xerox uses this character code standard in conjunction with its Interpress printers. Kanji has been implemented for a number of years on the Xerox 8044 (12-page-a-minute) Interpress laser printer which supports Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and all major Roman alphabet character sets. Dennis Frahmann Manager, Xerox Systems Institute