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From: rcd@violet.isc.COM (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: comp.laser-printers
Subject: Japanese fonts - there are standard bitmaps
Message-ID: <8708041612.AA03687@brillig.umd.edu>
Date: Mon, 3-Aug-87 19:02:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: brillig.8708041612.AA03687
Posted: Mon Aug  3 19:02:58 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 8-Aug-87 06:11:58 EDT
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Keywords: kanji JIS
Approved: laser-lovers@brillig.umd.edu

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.