Replace Weight Specific Noto CJK Packages with Variable Fonts
Hi, I have been looking at variable fonts for Noto CJK: https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-cjk/blob/main/Sans/README.md and I noticed that Variable Noto Sans CJK Japanese font actually takes up less space than the Non-Variable CJK Noto Sans Japanese Regular font + Non-Variable CJK Noto Sans Japanese Bold font. As variable fonts encode all weights, this means even if I only just wanted the Regular and Bold weights for Noto Sans CJK Japanese, it would be more space efficient for me to install the variable font. (while I also get the benefit of having many extra weights) So I think we should just replace weight specific Noto CJK packages with Variable fonts, as there is not much point in getting specific weights when the variable fonts are so small. Let me know what you think, Gordon Leung P.S: A part of me wonders if maybe we should even go one step further and not even bother with Language-specific fonts. Instead, only ship the Variable OTC which is roughly the same size as an Language-specific Variable Font anyways.
Hi, It's interesting. I will test variable-weight fonts correctly works with applications on openSUSE.
P.S: A part of me wonders if maybe we should even go one step further and not even bother with Language-specific fonts. Instead, only ship the Variable OTC which is roughly the same size as an Language-specific Variable Font anyways.
FYI: https://github.com/openSUSE/fonts-config/issues/6 You can find the reason in changelog or M17N list. At that time, there were some applications which cannot pick correct glyphs according to the current locale, especially on Chinese environment. Such applications tend to pick Japanese glyph instead of Simplified Chinese one in alphabetical order. This is the reason we migrated to the language specific version. However, I don't know (and nobody answers) the concrete name of such applications. So we are not sure this problem still exists. There is another motivation to back to the non language-specific OTC version. Their family name is different: Language specific: Noto Sans JP/SC/TC/KR Non language-specific: Noto Sans CJK JP/SC/TC/KR It seems that the latter one is common in the community. So some applications expect "Noto Sans CJK JP" not "Noto Sans JP", which requires manual installation of the CJK version. Best, Fuminobu TAKEYAMA On 2022/07/16 7:07, Gordon Leung wrote:
Hi,
I have been looking at variable fonts for Noto CJK: https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-cjk/blob/main/Sans/README.md <https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-cjk/blob/main/Sans/README.md> and I noticed that Variable Noto Sans CJK Japanese font actually takes up less space than the Non-Variable CJK Noto Sans Japanese Regular font + Non-Variable CJK Noto Sans Japanese Bold font. As variable fonts encode all weights, this means even if I only just wanted the Regular and Bold weights for Noto Sans CJK Japanese, it would be more space efficient for me to install the variable font. (while I also get the benefit of having many extra weights)
So I think we should just replace weight specific Noto CJK packages with Variable fonts, as there is not much point in getting specific weights when the variable fonts are so small.
Let me know what you think, Gordon Leung
P.S: A part of me wonders if maybe we should even go one step further and not even bother with Language-specific fonts. Instead, only ship the Variable OTC which is roughly the same size as an Language-specific Variable Font anyways.
Hi, On Saturday, July 16th, 2022 at 3:50 AM, Fuminobu TAKEYAMA <ftake@geeko.jp> wrote:
On 2022/07/16 7:07, Gordon Leung wrote:
P.S: A part of me wonders if maybe we should even go one step further and not even bother with
Language-specific fonts. Instead, only ship the Variable OTC which is roughly the same size as an
Language-specific Variable Font anyways.
FYI: https://github.com/openSUSE/fonts-config/issues/6
You can find the reason in changelog or M17N list. At that time, there were some applications which cannot pick correct glyphs according to the current locale, especially on Chinese environment. Such applications tend to pick Japanese glyph instead of Simplified Chinese one in alphabetical order. This is the reason we migrated to the language specific version.
However, I don't know (and nobody answers) the concrete name of such applications. So we are not sure this problem still exists.
There is another motivation to back to the non language-specific OTC version. Their family name is different:
Language specific: Noto Sans JP/SC/TC/KR Non language-specific: Noto Sans CJK JP/SC/TC/KR
It seems that the latter one is common in the community. So some applications expect "Noto Sans CJK JP" not "Noto Sans JP", which requires manual installation of the CJK version.
I downloaded and unzipped 04_NotoSansCJK-OTF.zip at https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/M17N:fonts/google-noto-sans-cjk-font.... Then ran: `fc-scan OTF/SimplifiedChinese/NotoSansCJKsc-Regular.otf | rg "Noto Sans SC"`, (rg is ripgrep aka faster grep) and got nothing. Then I ran `fc-scan OTF/SimplifiedChinese/NotoSansCJKsc-Regular.otf | rg "Noto Sans CJK SC"` and it returned: family: "Noto Sans CJK SC"(s) fullname: "Noto Sans CJK SC"(s) So it seems that the Language Specific fonts we have been shipping also only contain the Noto Sans CJK JP/SC/TC/KR family. I also tried this with the mono zip files and same thing. This makes me think that this is no longer an issue, as no one seems to have reported any breakage from us shipping fonts that have only the Noto Sans CJK JP/SC/TC/KR family. Maybe this means we can do without the language specific fonts? (or we can always just ship both the language specific variable fonts and the variable OTC)
Best, Fuminobu TAKEYAMA
You too, Gordon Leung
Hi, So I have been testing out Variable fonts and Variable OTCs. I have been able to reproduce the issue of Noto CJK JP overriding other CJK families on Firefox, so now I am instead advocating just to switch over to language specific variable fonts. Are there any objections to switching to language specific variable fonts for CJK? You can read the original email below for more detail. Also, the example I use with Noto CJK Japanese in my original email applies to all other CJK families as well. In all of them, the variable font takes up less space than Regular + Bold non-variable fonts. Gordon Leung On Friday, July 15th, 2022 at 10:07 PM, Gordon Leung <pirateclip@protonmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
I have been looking at variable fonts for Noto CJK: https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-cjk/blob/main/Sans/README.md and I noticed that Variable Noto Sans CJK Japanese font actually takes up less space than the Non-Variable CJK Noto Sans Japanese Regular font + Non-Variable CJK Noto Sans Japanese Bold font. As variable fonts encode all weights, this means even if I only just wanted the Regular and Bold weights for Noto Sans CJK Japanese, it would be more space efficient for me to install the variable font. (while I also get the benefit of having many extra weights)
So I think we should just replace weight specific Noto CJK packages with Variable fonts, as there is not much point in getting specific weights when the variable fonts are so small.
Let me know what you think, Gordon Leung
I think we need more test and fix applications * KDE on Leap 15.4 cannot select Noto Sans JP Regular and picks Thin instead of it. This problem does not reproduce on the current Tumbleweed, but Regular is shown as Normal. * LibreOffice cannot find weight variations (Thin, DemiLight, ...) of Noto Sans JP * There are some problems in font-config. ``` fc-match -a | grep "Noto Sans JP" NotoSansJP_VF.ttf: "Noto Sans JP" "Regular" NotoSansJP_VF.ttf: "Noto Sans JP" "Medium" NotoSansJP_VF.ttf: "Noto Sans JP" "DemiLight" NotoSansJP_VF.ttf: "Noto Sans JP" "Light" NotoSansJP_VF.ttf: "Noto Sans JP" "Thin" NotoSansJP_VF.ttf: "Noto Sans JP" "Bold" NotoSansJP_VF.ttf: "Noto Sans JP" "Black" NotoSansJP_VF.ttf: "Noto Sans JP" "<unknown style>" ```
Noto CJK JP overriding other CJK families on Firefox
Thank you for your information. I'm wondering Firefox does not use the current locale when picking glyph from a font. -- Fuminobu TAKEYAMA On 2022/07/23 2:00, Gordon Leung wrote:
Hi,
So I have been testing out Variable fonts and Variable OTCs. I have been able to reproduce the issue of Noto CJK JP overriding other CJK families on Firefox, so now I am instead advocating just to switch over to language specific variable fonts. Are there any objections to switching to language specific variable fonts for CJK? You can read the original email below for more detail. Also, the example I use with Noto CJK Japanese in my original email applies to all other CJK families as well. In all of them, the variable font takes up less space than Regular + Bold non-variable fonts.
Gordon Leung
On Friday, July 15th, 2022 at 10:07 PM, Gordon Leung <pirateclip@protonmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
I have been looking at variable fonts for Noto CJK: https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-cjk/blob/main/Sans/README.md <https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-cjk/blob/main/Sans/README.md> and I noticed that Variable Noto Sans CJK Japanese font actually takes up less space than the Non-Variable CJK Noto Sans Japanese Regular font + Non-Variable CJK Noto Sans Japanese Bold font. As variable fonts encode all weights, this means even if I only just wanted the Regular and Bold weights for Noto Sans CJK Japanese, it would be more space efficient for me to install the variable font. (while I also get the benefit of having many extra weights)
So I think we should just replace weight specific Noto CJK packages with Variable fonts, as there is not much point in getting specific weights when the variable fonts are so small.
Let me know what you think, Gordon Leung
participants (2)
-
Fuminobu TAKEYAMA -
Gordon Leung