UniSourceHanSansTWHK should be renamed UniSourceHanSansTW

[hfhchan]

The name "UniSourceHanSansTWHK" suggests that this font is suitable for Hong Kong regions as for Taiwan regions. However, this font neither adheres to the government standard, match industry guidelines for fonts, nor does it even resemble the written form in use by Hong Kong people.

In Hong Kong, there exists a pair of standards/guideline for the proper glyph rendering: "the Standard" by the former Education Department (superceeded by the Education Bureau), and "the Guideline", by the CLIAC of the Hong Kong Government.

The Standard is mandated by the Hong Kong Government in all primary and secondary Chinese textbooks, and closely resembles the written form in use by Hong Kong people.

The Guideline is an extension of the Standard to cover all typeable characters of Unicode, and applies to all fonts produced for local use. All mainstream Hong Kong newspapers and most printed articles, commercials and posters use fonts that all conform to the latter guideline.

The establishment of the local Standard and Guideline is partly due to the controversy that arose when Taiwan MOE attempted to standardize Chinese glyphs; the standardized version parted from immensely from the written forms that were current in use. For the vast majority of commonly used characters, the standardized, guideline suggested, and actual written form consistently depart from the Taiwan MOE standard. For many common characters, they depart to the extent that they are exact replicas of standardized forms of other locales, such as those mandated in the PRC Standard (for characters such as 有，胃，育，夏，戶，以，化，嘅，次 etc), or those specified in the Japanese Standards (for characters such as 骨，教 etc).

In recent years, however, there has been an increase in printed materials that use fonts that adhere to the Taiwan MOE Standard. These materials are usually prepared by individuals, and are due to Microsoft JhengHei (a font that adheres to the Taiwan MOE standard) being the default font for newer versions of Microsoft Office. Still, the glyphs of these fonts are often (incorrectly) referred as "電腦字" or "computer words", which colloquially suggest that these words are artificially composed and not of "proper" descent.

Given both the font departing significantly from the Hong Kong's government standard (by design), nor resembling Hong Kong people's general writing forms (by design), it would be misleading to continue to refer to the font as UniSourceHanSansTWHK.

[ShikiSuen]

This report looks much much effective and understandable than what Syaoran Hinata reported (not the same issue).

[zerng07]

Refer to issue #6.

[hfhchan]

Please understand that the KangXi glyph styles mentioned and advocated in issue #6 are completely different issues. In fact, issue #6 may have contained misleading information:

"The glyph standard that most people use is still the one used in Kangxi Dictionary, which people call The old typeface or Kangxi Dictionary Glyphs".

This is completely not the case in Hong Kong. This information is true for Taiwan (most books sold in Hong Kong authored from Taiwan INDEED prefer this KangXi form over Taiwan MOE Standard. But all Hong Kong newspapers have long shifted to use fonts adhering our local Guideline for at least 5 to 10 years.

This issue is not about supporting alternate glyphs, or requesting for a font with different glyphs (I'd be glad if Adobe put in the effort though :D). This issue is about respecting that Taiwanese standards and Hong Kong standards (+norms) are distinct to the extent similar to those between PRC and Taiwan.

Contrary to that mentioned in issue #6, in Hong Kong, our standards closely resemble the written form used by people and the printed forms in circulation. The "Taiwan MOE Standard" was politically controversial, but the Hong Kong Standard has met with little to none opposition locally.

[ShikiSuen]

@hfhchan So it seems that there's no formal standards of what Syaoran Hinata wanted, is that right?

[tamcy]

As a HongKonger, while I welcome Google/Adobe to release a UniSourceHanSans / Noto CJK following Hong Kong's guideline, I doubt if this will happen in short term. So the problem is that, revoking "HK" from the typeface means that they no longer needed to care about the use case of this font in Hong Kong. Since it is UniSourceHanSansTW, they can simply ignore request #17 reported by me. They can even remove HKSCS glyphs from the font because it is TW not HK oriented and we can say nothing on it. I'm not sure if anyone want this to happen. So I would rather see including "HK" in this typeface a good intention to take care of the use case of Hong Kong people.

[hfhchan]

Indeed @ShikiSuen there is no former standard for what Syaoran Hinata wanted. In fact, the KangXi forms referred to are not even the KangXi forms in the KangXi dictionary, but a modern variant.

[hfhchan]

@tamcy unfortuantely, yes. But I still find it very disrepectful that companies have long treated that Taiwan Standard be applicable in Hong Kong. Taiwan Standard and Hong Kong Standard are so different they are like Taiwan Standard and Japanese Standard or Japanese Standard and mainland China Standard. I think the naming is more or less for respect that Hong Kong has its own standards and norms.

To be honest, there are also some other nice open-source fonts that cover the HKSCS glyphs as well, however they use the mainland Chinese grapheme standards. I think it is more a personal preference to choose a font that conform to mainland Chinese grapheme standard or Taiwan grapheme standard, they both differ from our standards and norms so much. (In fact, more and more teenagers use the Japanese fonts too)

[tamcy]

The documentation mentions "Traditional Chinese" and doesn't specify that the font targets Taiwan and Hong Kong. And as you can see, Google's version use "T Chinese" as the name. So maybe it's better to name the fonts "TC" instead of "TWHK", but this is just a matter of choice. I am not offended at all.

Also, it seems that neither the HK government nor the EDB (Education Bureau) had released any reference guide on the Hei (Black/Sans Serif) style. There are reference guides for Song and Kai though:

http://www.ogcio.gov.hk/en/business/tech_promotion/ccli/cliac/glyphs_guidelines.htm

So perhaps it isn't that wrong to say the font is applicable to HK environment.

And there is a technical issue - an OTF font cannot exceed 65535 glyphs. There may not be enough room to support one more variant (although it is possible that many standard style in HK already exists in other variants).

Finally, I also want to add that the reason EDB/HK Gov's writing standard didn't stir up much controversy/opposition may be due to the following reasons:

• There aren't many fonts in the market designed to comply with HK's standard.
• There aren't many printed materials using the font conforming 100% to the HK standard.

There was a "Hong Kong Song Style Reference Font" released by the government and DynaFont, and I think the glyphs are not better than that of Taiwan's. Here is a comparison:

From the above image you can find that

• Source Hans Sans tried it best to follow Taiwan's standard but there are still exceptions. It is a good thing, because the standard "卄" component in 草 is ugly. Unfortunately, this ugly "卄" is also the standard form in HK.
• The image also included 2 commercial fonts targeting the HK market developed by Monotype. They are used by many of the HK publications. However they also don't follow the HK reference style fully. One obvious example is "丸". The guidelines in HK/TW require the component "丶" to live inside "九". However, many people write the 丶 so that it crosses the stroke 丿. Monotype chose the convention over the standard. So, even Google/Adobe releases a real UniSourceHanSansHK, it may not be the one you are looking for.

(I mentioned the names of other font vendors. Not sure if the maintainer of this tracker is comfortable with that. My apology in advance)

[hfhchan]

@tamcy the reference document used in Education is the 常用字字形表 "List of Graphemes of Commonly-used Chinese Characters" from 1984 of the 香港教育署 "Education Department", now superceeded by 香港小學學習字詞表。By regulation all primary schools and secondary schools are required to adhere to graphemes specified, but in practice teachers are usually slightly lax on certain strokes, especially the ones you have highlighted, e.g. 丸, 卄, 系, 致.

And due to the technical issue, having a font supporting both TW and HK variant in the same font is infeasible too.

You are partially right on the reasons that it has not stirred up controversy. The standard has always been enforced (by regulation) on hand written form, while the Guideline is of suggestive nature. The government has not mandated that strict adherence be enfored in media (unlike in the PRC) nor running campaigns to stop using the non-standardized forms (unlike in Taiwan). Furthermore, the Standard itself specifies certain alternative forms, for example the top stroke for 戶. The government effectively gives space to fine tune certain character forms for better display (e.g. 丸、系、瓜，草)

However, the most controversial and most (un)appealing forms, such as the Taiwan MOE Standard 肉 variant component in 胃 are not accepted as an alternative form.

I would like to note that the Hong Kong Song Style Reference Font released by the government does not actually correspond completely to any version of the Standard nor the Guideline. It was more or less based on tweaking PMingLiu to align with the Standard on characters where the word form was most controversial, such as words which involve the 月/肉 component, e.g. 有胃.

Given the vast amount of words with involve the 月/肉 component, simply the change to use this variation is enough to distinguish between the Taiwan MOE and Hong Kong standard. The variations highlighted by @tamcy are the more subtle ones which are tolerated (and for some even more commonly used ones), but I am quite sure the 月/肉 pair is not one of them. In my opinion, simply this distinction is already enough to reject the font as being suitable for HK.

Lastly, naming it TC also suggests that it is for all / majority of Traditional Chinese users. It would be incorrect as well (despite it being quite a common practice). I am still in favor of renaming the font as UniSourceHansTW.

[hfhchan]

@kenlunde It was mentioned in issue #6:

First, the representative glyphs as used in the national standards of each region are those
that are preferred, and it is not really a matter of correctness (which can be subjective, and
can change over time) but rather one of following current conventions.

In fact rejection of certain character variants inside the Taiwan MOE standard are still listed today officially as one of the reasons that these Hong Kong standard and guideline exists. Is this strong enough evidence to suggest that it this font is actually not Hong Kong's "national standard" (ok, Hong Kong may not be a nation, but we do have laws and de-facto standards)?

All fonts in use in our printed newspapers, signage in government public facilities, and most fonts in billboards, advertisements etc, do not conform to the Taiwan MOE Standard, but are more closely with the Hong Kong Standard / guideline, or use a modern variant of Kangxi form. Does this indicate it is against current convention either?

Hope this justifies the suggestion.

ROC has no jurisdiction over Hong Kong SAR. Despite coverage of Hong Kong character code points, UniSourceHanSansTWHK don't stick to or correlate well with the Hong Kong standards nor conventions. It wouldn't be fair to Hong Kong people that our standards and norms are ignored, and assumed we can deal with any standard that the ROC sets.

[kenlunde]

This is simply a quick note to reassure the community that I am not ignoring this issue. Rather, because I am on vacation in South Dakota, and 1,500 miles away from my reference materials, I cannot take any substantive or meaningful action until I return to work sometime next week.

If we do come up with a good solution for handling Hong Kong–specific glyphs, this change may very well be effected. Rest assured, we take these and other issues seriously, and very much appreciate the feedback.

[kenlunde]

I am closing this Issue, and have opened Issue #48 to indicate the action that is planned to address the concerns. Please feel free to continue posting to this issue if appropriate.