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And that is just for western text. Welcome to Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese -- Over 50,000 kanji glyphs, hangul, hiragana/katakana/kanji mixed script, lang

And that is just for western text. Welcome to Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese -- Over 50,000 kanji glyphs, hangul, hiragana/katakana/kanji mixed script, language-specific glyph variants with identical codepoints, Left-to-Right, vertical text where some glyphs must rotate but some must not, ruby text, language-specific word wrapping rules, language-specific ligatures that exist but mostly shouldn't be used save for very few occasions, terrible software implementations based on non-understanding of all of the above, ARRRRRGH!

77pt77 5y ago
> ruby text Excuse me?
- mvgoogler 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_character https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_character
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    Not to be confused with Ruby strings, which have their own complexities
    - dorianmariefr 5y ago
      Not to be confused with `"ruby".class #=> String` :)
- wodenokoto 5y ago
  I don’t know why it’s called ruby. If you know Japanese you will know this as “furigana”. It’s mainly used for added readings to words written using kanji.
  - RobertKerans 5y ago
    "Ruby" is the name of the size of the type
    - taejo 5y ago
      To expand on that for those that don't know, traditionally all font sizes had names, like Great Primer for 18 pt, Ruby for 5.5 pt, and many others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_point-size_names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_point-size_names
lifthrasiir 5y ago
And that sheer amount of glyphs needed to be designed mean that, contrary to the article's claim, the fake or synthesized bold is not a crime but rather a form of self-defense.
- needle0 5y ago
  Many Japanese fonts I'm aware of do have that many glyphs all manually hand-optimized for the full range of font weights all the way from UltraLight to Heavy. Yes, it's an enormous amount of work; yes, Asian type foundries is serious business.
  - lifthrasiir 5y ago
    Yeah, many serious CJK fonts do have multiple weights, but are rarer than Western fonts. Much rarer still, CJK fonts with two or more weights or even the full gamut (100 through 900). This severely constrains typographic choices.

77pt77 5y ago

> ruby text Excuse me?

mvgoogler 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_character https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_character
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  Not to be confused with Ruby strings, which have their own complexities
  - dorianmariefr 5y ago
    Not to be confused with `"ruby".class #=> String` :)
wodenokoto 5y ago
I don’t know why it’s called ruby. If you know Japanese you will know this as “furigana”. It’s mainly used for added readings to words written using kanji.
- RobertKerans 5y ago
  "Ruby" is the name of the size of the type
  - taejo 5y ago
    To expand on that for those that don't know, traditionally all font sizes had names, like Great Primer for 18 pt, Ruby for 5.5 pt, and many others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_point-size_names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_point-size_names

lifthrasiir 5y ago

And that sheer amount of glyphs needed to be designed mean that, contrary to the article's claim, the fake or synthesized bold is not a crime but rather a form of self-defense.

needle0 5y ago
Many Japanese fonts I'm aware of do have that many glyphs all manually hand-optimized for the full range of font weights all the way from UltraLight to Heavy. Yes, it's an enormous amount of work; yes, Asian type foundries is serious business.
- lifthrasiir 5y ago
  Yeah, many serious CJK fonts do have multiple weights, but are rarer than Western fonts. Much rarer still, CJK fonts with two or more weights or even the full gamut (100 through 900). This severely constrains typographic choices.