HeitiTC Episode #2

First of all, I am not an expert on glyphs, my observation mostly comes from my aesthetic feeling which I am still proud of. I did have good calligraphy training in my childhood, hence the aesthetic eyes are still there. Secondly, this continuous collections of how people think about new default TC font in Mac OS X 10.6 doesn't represent my opinion on the new font. Finally let's check the services from National Languages Committee, Ministry of Education, R.O.C (Taiwan): ❶ Dictionary of Chinese character variants. ❷ Learning program for stroke order of frequently used Chinese characters. Then come with the comment collections:

aquaron

究竟「俞」字頭是「人」還是「入」？另外，台灣教育部選字是否毫無爭議？

(From mjhsieh: this might be slightly political unless there is more academic references backing other than 康熙 dictionary. Or this argument is simply bashing Taiwan's previous effort to consolidating TC...)

Evadne Wu

Snow Leopard comes with Heiti TC (“STHeiti TC”, “Hei TC”), a traditional Chinese typeface that replaced LiHei Pro. It has a number of errors, inconsistencies and imbalances, voiding professional use.iPhone OS 3.× also comes with this erroneous typeface.We ask Apple to rework the typeface so that it adheres to the high standards that Apple represents.

TenThousandThings

There are two unrelated problems here. The first is that the choices are not consistent. If you're going to use 靑 for 青 as a component then you have to use it consistently throughout the font, which is not done and absolutely wrong. The second problem is actually rather interesting -- using 靑 is not wrong, it is instead dated. For example, the influential Far East C-E dictionary, originally compiled by Liang Shiqiu 梁實秋 (1903-1987) uses it throughout. In the more recent editions of the dictionary that give both simplified and traditional forms, 靑 is used for traditional forms while 青 is used for simplified.

Meow Wang

這樣看來，黑體-繁真的是個好字體，不僅清晰、一致，也與一般老百姓在馬路上看到的路牌差不多。如此親和的字型，有何理由反對呢？

(From mjhsieh: Street sign is probably not a good "standard", but if Taiwan doesn't have any consistency of typeface in people's life like she wrote, her opinion would be valid.)

Bear with me, the next time I should be able to collect enough data to draw my own conclusion.

Ps. I am avoiding further comments from simplified Chinese users, this kind of discussion is more like commenting on the other group of people, not the product they use.

A non-scientific survey on Snow Leopard's default traditional Chinese font: Aesthetically speaking

Here are some responses I got from the Internet that might be related to the aesthetics of this Heiti TC font. This collection is in chronicle order of me visiting the web for this issue.

@ingramchen

Snow Leopard 中文字型超醜，在一個以設計師為導向的平台發生這種事，無論 Apple 本身或用戶，都出了毛病。

kourge

不過注音輸入法還是一樣爛，而且預設字體反而換成更醜更不標準的字。

Izero

雪豹的新預設字體真的很醜，請抓zonble大大的TCFail改回原本10.5的字體。

zonble

字體本身也不清晰，讀起來非常吃力，而且字體中有許多字根本不是標準或是在台灣習慣的寫法，可能是來自日文漢字的寫法，或根本就是錯字。同一個部首的許多字，也往往沒有依照一套固定的造字規則

Vista

雪豹的中文果然很醜，只好趕緊請出TCFail來改造，這算美中不足之處吧，希望蘋果公司可以聽到我們的心聲…

Zooka

I have to say it honestly: the new font of Traditional Chinese sucks! It's really ugly!

lococo36

10.6 的中文字體很醜的這個問題，在很多討論區已經快要討論到爆掉，很多人都想要一人一信請願！蘋果不要亂用字體！是真的很醜，也很難看！

阿傑

不過，它有個很明顯的缺點，就是有很多筆畫是不統一的。例如它的「言」字旁最上方一筆幾乎都作橫畫，和傳統宋體相同，但「言」字單獨用時卻作斜點。它也遵照傳統印刷體設計原則，將「亠」、「宀」的一點作豎點，但是「交」、「亡」兩字卻是斜點（「亡」字左下方的直角轉折也不盡正確）。其他這類的問題不勝枚舉。...

銀牙烈虎

只能說我們這邊缺乏主導蘋果系統正體中文字型的權力，即使一人一信連署都沒什麼大用，蘋果官方頂多只是調整了標點符號的基線位置（而且沒調得很好）而已。

Maxdolphin

本來在網路上覺得字型感覺不出有多醜, 安裝後才發現真的醜到不行

toywoof

但都有唔好處，就係發覺d中文字好似無咁靚，無以前咁黑，特別係用msn／qq d中文字醜樣左！

mingfai

昨日snow leopard 已經送到家，只是一片upgrade CD，連盒也沒有。昨晚沒有甚麼時間試，最大的不同就中文字核突了許多，之後用之前看過網上教的方法而改字體。

winandmac

升級至Snow Leopard後，最令人困擾的是其中文字變得相當核突。字體變幼了，看得相當辛苦，部份中文字寫法又與正常中文字不同，網上有不少中文用家都表示感到很困擾。過往在Leopard用的粗體字，不明白為何升級後來了一個大倒退。

jameshsi

台灣的許多朋友都說改到雪豹之後字型變了，變得很難看，我昨天升級 Mac Mini 之後並無感覺 現在升級小白之後，才發現。

zhusee2

Heiti 的問題出在哪裡呢？看一下上面的比較圖就知道。最左邊的是 Lucida Grande，英文的預設字體；中間是 Heiti TC；右邊是 LiHei Pro。我覺得最明顯的問題就在 Heiti TC 太細了。Heiti TC 下面有細體跟中黑體，可是兩者粗細根本只差一點點，說真的很難看出來。

i553041

將Snow Leopard要命的預設字型換返Leopard的儷黑 Pro! 10.6 樣樣都好，就係繁中字型好得人驚，網上有軟體可以將Snow Leopard的繁中字型換返做Leopard的儷黑 Pro

Chainsaw

此外， Snow Leopard 的預設繁體中文字型由 LiHei Pro 轉為 Heiti TC 。此 Heiti TC 有人認為非常核突，也有人指出，這個字型與 Windows 的細明體一樣，是字型不協調的。例如「青」字，下方是個月字。但「請」字，月字卻轉成円字。有忿怒的網民編寫軟件 TCFail ，將 Snow Leopard 的預設字型轉回 LiHei Pro ，更呼籲用戶向蘋果投訴。

rondoyoyo

雖然安裝順利，使用順暢，可是它預設的字型真的是慘不忍「睹」

If you need more list, please comment to request.

awk stuff

AWK can also be used to generate lazy code.

$ awk '/Block inner limits/{print $4,$5}' b37.out | awk '\
? NR==1        {printf "if      ( h*i+gox >=%6.1f .and. h*i+gox <=%6.1f .and. &\n",$1,$2} \
? NR>1&&NR%3==1{printf "else if ( h*i+gox >=%6.1f .and. h*i+gox <=%6.1f .and. &\n",$1,$2}\
? NR%3==2      {printf "          h*j+goy >=%6.1f .and. h*j+goy <=%6.1f .and. &\n",$1,$2}\
? NR%3==0      {printf "          h*k+goz >=%6.1f .and. h*k+goz <=%6.1f ) then\n"$1,$2}\
? NR%3==0      {printf "   write(%d,\47(4f)\47) mytmp,h*i+gox,h*j+goy,h*k+goz\n",8000+NR/3}'