13

TUG maintains an extensive catalogue of fonts at http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/allfonts.html . Is there also one maintained for CJK fonts? I've been using XeLaTeX on OS X with my own fonts, mostly proprietary, but I'm moving a lot of my work to Ubuntu and would like to try a more standard set of open-source CJK fonts. One concern is finding a single font that covers essentially all of the CJK code points, rare as well as common, with reasonably presentable glyphs.

Thanks for any suggestions.

CampanIgnis
  • 4,624
brannerchinese
  • 5,927

2 Answers2

14

You have many choices since you're already using XeLaTeX. :) There's a nice compilation of List of CJK fonts on Wikipedia. FOSS fonts are labelled as such in this list.

As for "a single font that covers essentially all of the CJK code points, rare as well as common", choices are more limited there.

[Updated; it's 2020 now!] AFAIK there is no single .TTF or .OTF that does that (I guess the file size would be too big). You may want to go for Noto Serif CJK SC, Noto Serif CJK TC, Noto Sans CJK SC, Noto Sans CJK TC. (They are also known as Source Hans Serif/Sans, 思源宋体/黑体)

There are also font projects that distribute two separate font files, which together will cover the entire CJK codepoint range. Two open-source fonts that do that, that I'm aware of, are:

Then using a recent version of XeCJK (as outlined in this answer to your earlier question) (example below uses Han Nom):

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[fallback]{xeCJK}
\setCJKmainfont{HAN NOM A}
\setCJKfallbackfamilyfont{rm}{HAN NOM B}
% NOTE: "rm" for \setCJKmainfont, "sf" for \setCJKsansfont, "tt" for  \setCJKmonofont
%       and others for \setCJKfamilyfont.

\begin{document}
漢字源
\end{document}

As @LeoLiu stated, the kanjis in Hanazono look very 'japanified'. Han Nom looks much better for Chinese text hanzi (to my eyes anyway). Nevertheless, you didn't mention if you're working on Chinese text specifically: you just said "CJK". In any case, both Hanazono and Han Nom contain glyphs for hiragana and katakana, but unfortunately not hangul.

imnothere
  • 14,215
  • Han Nom is now working after a restart. – imnothere Apr 28 '12 at 07:53
  • Thanks very much. I work mainly in Chinese rime books 韻書 and some classical texts, but I like to have access to Japanese forms when (occasionally) necessary. I've used Han Nom before and like it. – brannerchinese Apr 28 '12 at 14:02
  • I'd also like to ask whether Han Nom and XeLaTeX now support vertical text. At the moment I'm stuck using an old copy of MS Word for this, and it really doesn't work well. I'd like to get rid of it once and for all, but haven't yet been able to make a go of vertical CJK with LaTeX. – brannerchinese Apr 28 '12 at 15:29
  • Vertical text is possible in XeLaTeX, as @LeoLiu demonstrated in this answer. However it seems to depend on the fonts providing the vertical glyphs; which doesn't seem to be the case with Han Nom since it's a TTF. – imnothere Apr 28 '12 at 16:14
  • pTeX for Japanese has better vertical support, although I know little about it. – Leo Liu Apr 28 '12 at 18:05
  • @LianTzeLim: I was very intrigued by LeoLiu's earlier answer about vertical CJK, but was not able to make it work for myself and decided it was a font problem. I'm sure this is something much in demand, though, and eventually it will become easier to do. You can see (don't waste your time, though) what I produce using Word if you look at any of the various "texts for classroom display" at https://brannerchinese.com/w3302_2012spring/texts/ . Using Word is truly horrible, though, and when the day comes that I can do everything I want in LaTeX, I assure you I will celebrate boisterously. – brannerchinese Apr 29 '12 at 03:21
  • 1
    @brannerchinese I just had another go at Leo's example in his earlier answer, using Han Nom. After some tinkering, after modifying it to \def\CJKmovesymbol#1{\raise.35em\hbox to 1em{#1}} (note the additional to 1em), vertical text worked. Somewhat. The punctuations still look awful, but my box-fu is still too weak to fix it. – imnothere Apr 30 '12 at 06:33
  • @LeoLiu I'm not even sure if (or how) I've installed pTeX in TeXlive correctly, or using it in multilingual documents... – imnothere Apr 30 '12 at 06:36
  • @LianTzeLim: I've no idea about pTeX either. My previous answer still works on my computer. And you can also use Adobe's Chinese fonts. – Leo Liu Apr 30 '12 at 06:43
  • 2
    @LeoLiu Your previous answer works for me too. I think it's because of Han Nom that we're having problems. The OP needs Han Nom since he's working with ancient text that involves high codepoint CJK (and prefers free fonts), which aren't available in Adobe's fonts (which seem to be simplified only or traditional only). Currently xeCJK allows only 1 level of fallback, so if using Adobe's fonts, we can't go "use Adobe simplified font; then fall back on traditional font; then fall back on rare i.e. high codepoints font". – imnothere Apr 30 '12 at 07:29
  • 2
    @LianTzeLim: Current xeCJK in the svn trunk (LaTeX3 version) allows any levels of fallback. The develop version needs test and will be published later. – Leo Liu Apr 30 '12 at 07:40
  • @LianTzeLim: Thanks to you both. I will keep watching for more developments. XeLaTeX is an extremely exciting development for me. – brannerchinese May 01 '12 at 04:28
  • @LianTzeLim -- do you know what the difference is between hannom and hannomH? Both have the same number of glyphs, but the hannomH files are considerably larger. thanks! – simon May 16 '13 at 16:33
  • 1
    @simon I'm not sure either; but the hannom.zip files didn't work for me. I tried hannomH.zip instead, and that one worked. – imnothere May 17 '13 at 03:30
  • 1
    HanNom is a very nice font. It also covers all Nom characters that are specific to Vietnamese. – Max Mar 10 '16 at 23:55
  • I’ve used Babelstone Han for its large repertoire. – Davislor Jan 15 '20 at 07:03
  • CJK fonts usually display a lot bigger than non-CJK fonts. For the same contents, CJK occupies around 150% spaces. – Raptor Sep 18 '23 at 04:16
9

No, there are very few free (either freedom or free of charge) Chinese fonts available.

The Japanese fonts, like Hanazono (花園) fonts, are not suitable for serious Chinese document, since some of the glyphs do not meet the standard of (both simplified and traditional) Chinese.

The simplified Chinese Linux community today often use these fonts:

  • Several fonts freely contributed by Arphic Technology:

    1. AR PL SungtiL GB (文鼎 PL 简报宋)
    2. AR PL KaitiM GB (文鼎 PL 中楷)
    3. AR PLBaosong2GBK Light (文鼎 PL 报宋二 GBK)

    these fonts are free, and have been converted to PostScript Type1 format and contributed as part of the cjk-fonts package on CTAN.

  • Several fonts contributed by Wen Quanyi (文泉驿) project:

    1. WenQuanYi Zen Hei (文泉驿正黑)
    2. WenQuanYi Micro Hei (文泉驿微米黑)

However, these fonts are too few and still not good enough for publishing. Some Linux users have to use commercial fonts from Mac OS X (常州华文 fonts) and Windows (中易中标 fonts, Founder Type fonts etc.), or other commercial fonts from Adobe, Monotype, etc.

The most common used Chinese TeX distribution is CTeX suite on Windows, so ctex package and zhmetrics configured some Windows fonts. These commercial fonts by 中易中标 are actualy widely used:

  1. SimSun (宋体)
  2. SimHei (黑体)
  3. KaiTi (楷体, GB18030 charset) or KaiTi_GB2312 (GB2312 charset)
  4. FangSong (仿宋, GB18030 charset) or FangSong_GB2312 (GB2312 charset)
  5. YouYuan (幼圆)
  6. LiSu (隶书)
Leo Liu
  • 77,365