[comp.fonts] Hiragana and Katakana fonts

echrzanowski@watmath.waterloo.edu (Edward Chrzanowski) (10/12/89)

For all those people requesting info on the Japanese fonts.

                 Hang on for a while.

I received numerous responses and I am following them up.  I even sent out
feelers to Japan.

One sore note.  Adobe does make a postcript version of the fonts but only
sell it to OEM's in Japan.  Does anyone know how these are like or whether
they can be brought out of Japan?

echrzanowski@watmath.waterloo.edu

amanda@intercon.com (Amanda Walker) (10/13/89)

In article <30162@watmath.waterloo.edu>, echrzanowski@watmath.waterloo.edu
(Edward Chrzanowski) writes:
> Does anyone know how these are like or whether
> they can be brought out of Japan?

They're *gorgeous*.  I have a beautiful sample page of Kanji (the style is
whatever the Japanese call the equivalent of Chinese Kai-Shu). The biggest
problem that I know about is a technical one--they need new versions of
PostScript that support composite fonts, and I gather they take up more
memory than most current PostScript printers have...

There may also be licensing issues, since I would imagine a Japanese company
(NEC, maybe) cooperated with Adobe in the development (the page I have is
off of an NEC printer).

--
Amanda Walker <amanda@intercon.com>

"Tobacco is the only drug in America that will kill you if it's taken
as directed." --Dr. C. Everett Koop, former U.S. Surgeon General

dhosek@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Don Hosek) (10/13/89)

[with regard to Adobe's Kanji fonts]
In article <1486@intercon.com> amanda@intercon.com (Amanda Walker) writes:
>In article <30162@watmath.waterloo.edu>, echrzanowski@watmath.waterloo.edu
>(Edward Chrzanowski) writes:
>> Does anyone know how these are like or whether
>> they can be brought out of Japan?
>
>They're *gorgeous*.  I have a beautiful sample page of Kanji (the style is
>whatever the Japanese call the equivalent of Chinese Kai-Shu). 

Talking to colleagues in Japan, the most common sentiment about the Adobe
Kanji font is that it is rather ugly and hard to read. The only samples
I have are a gargantuan multi-page printout of Adobe's JIS table, so I
have never gotten a chance to see them in use, however.

-dh

-- 
Don Hosek            | Internet: DHOSEK@HMCVAX.CLAREMONT.EDU
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