How to select a font for the main Chinese character and another font for its Furigana?

Question

The objective is to make a list of Japanese vocabularies with Kanji stroke order for the main characters, its furigana (small kana characters placed above the main characters), and its meaning (in English).

I have KanjiStrokeOrders font installed in my machine. I download it from this site (click).

\documentclass[border=12pt,12pt,preview,varwidth]{standalone}

\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{fontspec}
%\usepackage{xeCJK}
\usepackage{ruby}
\renewcommand\rubysep{.05ex}

\AtBeginDocument{\fontsize{20}{20}\selectfont}

\let\temp\ruby
\renewcommand\ruby[2]{\temp {\fontsize{60}{60}\fontspec{KanjiStrokeOrders}\selectfont#1}{#2}}

\def\mean#1{: \textcolor{red}{#1}}

\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}
    \item \ruby{会}{かい}\ruby{社}{しゃ}　\mean{company}
    \item \ruby{朝}{あさ} \mean{morning}
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}

without xeCJK

Without xeCJK the main characters appears but their furigana disappear.

with xeCJK

With xeCJK the furiganas appear but the main characters no longer use KanjiStrokeOrder fonts.

Question:

How should I select the font to achieve my objective mentioned above?

Answer 1

This is my first experiment without xeCJK.

% run: xelatex mal-furigana.tex
\documentclass[border=12pt,12pt,preview,varwidth]{standalone}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\newfontfamily\kanji{KanjiStrokeOrders_v3.001.ttf}
\newfontfamily\furigana{FandolSong-Regular}
\usepackage{ruby}
\renewcommand\rubysep{.05ex}
\AtBeginDocument{\fontsize{20}{20}\selectfont}
\let\temp\ruby
\renewcommand\ruby[2]{\temp 
  {\fontsize{60}{60}\kanji#1}%
  {\furigana#2}
  }% end of \ruby...
\def\mean#1{: \textcolor{red}{#1}}
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}
    \item \ruby{会}{かい}\ruby{社}{しゃ}　\mean{company}
    \item \ruby{朝}{あさ} \mean{morning}
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}

Update 1: This is the experiment with xeCJK using a new font family.

% run: xelatex mal-furigana.tex
%\documentclass[border=12pt,12pt,preview,varwidth]{standalone}
\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\pagestyle{empty}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{xeCJK}
\usepackage{ruby}
\renewcommand\rubysep{.05ex}
\setCJKmainfont{KanjiStrokeOrders}
\newCJKfontfamily\furigana{FandolSong-Regular}
\AtBeginDocument{\fontsize{20}{20}\selectfont}
\let\temp\ruby
\renewcommand\ruby[2]{\temp 
  {\fontsize{60}{60}#1}%\selectfont\setmainfont{KanjiStrokeOrders}
  {\fontsize{20}{20}\furigana#2}
  }% end of \ruby...
\def\mean#1{: \textcolor{red}{#1}}
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}
    \item \ruby{会}{かい}\ruby{社}{しゃ}　\mean{company}
    \item \ruby{朝}{あさ} \mean{morning}
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}

Update 2: This is the promised version without xeCJK and ruby. I am placing furigana by means of tikz package. We can run xelatex and lualatex. Setting up a TTF/OTF font for pdflatex engine is possible (but we are limited to 256 glyphs per font file), but it's out-of-date these days. I enclose the code and its preview.

% run: xelatex or lualatex mal-furi-general.tex
\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\pagestyle{empty}
\parindent=0pt
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{tikz}
\newfontfamily\kanji{KanjiStrokeOrders_v3.001.ttf}
\newfontfamily\furigana{FandolSong-Regular}
\def\mkanji{\fontsize{60}{60}\kanji}
\def\mfurigana{\fontsize{15}{15}\furigana}
\def\mruby#1#2{%
  \begin{tikzpicture}[baseline=(temp.base)]
  \node(temp){\mkanji#1};
  \node[anchor=center,yshift=0.5ex]at(temp.north){\mfurigana#2};
  \end{tikzpicture}%
  }% End of \mruby...
\def\mean#1{ \textcolor{red}{#1}}
\newcount\malc \malc=0
\def\mterm{\par
  \advance\malc by 1\relax%
  \the\malc. %
  }% End of \mterm...
\begin{document}
\fontsize{20}{20}\selectfont
\mterm \mruby{会}{かい}\mruby{社}{しゃ}\mean{company}
\mterm \mruby{朝}{あさ}\mean{morning}
\end{document}

Answer 2

If you want to know how to select font for Chinese characters, you should know which font do you want to use for every character, and you need to know the basic functions of xeCJK if you use it.

The fonts

In your example, you should to use a special font KanjiStrokeOrders for 漢字 (kanji), and use another Japanese font, which is NOT properly specified in your document, for 振り仮名 (furigana).

If you don't set a proper font, you cannot typeset any CJK characters at all, because the default Latin Modern fonts do not contain CJK glyphs.

In contrast, if you use v3.2.10 or later version of xeCJK, Chinese fonts Fandol will be loaded with a warning:

*************************************************
* xeCJK warning: "fandol"
* 
* Fandol is being set as the default font for CJK text.
* Please make sure it has been properly installed.
*************************************************

That's why the furiganas appear with xeCJK in your document even if you didn't specify a Japanese font.

Usage of xeCJK

The document of xeCJK v3.x is only available in Chinese, I'm sorry.

The main purposes of xeCJK are

• To select different fonts for CJK characters and Latin characters automatically;
• To get proper line breaking;
• To do punctation kerning.

The basic function is font switching, whose syntax is the same as fontspec package:

• \setCJKmainfont — \setmainfont
• \setCJKsansfont — \setsansfont
• \setCJKmonofont — \setmonofont
• \newCJKfontfamily — \newfontfamily
• \CJKfontspec — \fontspec

Solution

% !TeX encoding = UTF-8
% !TeX program = XeLaTeX
\documentclass[border=12pt,12pt,preview,varwidth]{standalone}

\usepackage{xcolor}

\usepackage{xeCJK}
\setCJKmainfont{ipaexm.ttf} % For furigana and other Japanese characters
\newCJKfontfamily\strokefont{KanjiStrokeOrders_v3.001.ttf} % For stroke order

\usepackage{ruby}
\renewcommand\rubysep{.05ex}
\renewcommand\rubysize{0.2}
\let\oldruby\ruby
\renewcommand\ruby[2]{{\fontsize{60}{60}\selectfont\oldruby{\strokefont#1}{#2}}}

\def\mean#1{: \textcolor{red}{#1}}

\AtBeginDocument{\fontsize{20}{20}\selectfont}

\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}
    \item \ruby{会}{かい}\ruby{社}{しゃ}　\mean{company}
    \item \ruby{朝}{あさ} \mean{morning}
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}