Best chinese characters font

Xi0N · 2012-09-07 19:00:35

I'm currently learning chinese and I noticed the characters look really not ok.

From arch wiki,

ttf-tw - Kai and Song traditional Chinese font from the Ministry of Education of Taiwan (AUR).
wqy-microhei - A Sans-Serif style high quality CJK outline font. (AUR)
wqy-zenhei - Hei Ti Style (sans-serif) Chinese Outline font embedded with bitmapped Song Ti (also supporting Japanese (partial) and Korean characters).
ttf-arphic-ukai - Kaiti (brush stroke) Unicode font (enabling anti-aliasing is suggested)
ttf-arphic-uming - Mingti (printed) Unicode font
opendesktop-fonts - New Sung font, previously is ttf-fireflysung package
wqy-bitmapfont - Bitmapped Song Ti (serif) Chinese font
ttf-hannom - Chinese and Vietnamese TrueType font

Which would be the best choice?
And, if you have multiple fonts installed, which one will the system use?

EDIT:

Left characters are the ones displayed by chromium
The right ones, in the same computer, the same document that was in chromium (hosted in google drive and downloaded as excel) rendered by libreoffice.....

Can I guess it's a problem with how chromium manages the fonts?
Thanks!!

Last edited by Xi0N (2012-09-07 19:18:00)

bohoomil · 2012-09-07 19:31:11

Any details about your freetype2 engine (a vanilla one or patched)?

The fonts are OK, I'm using some of them and they look well, even in Chrome (though I personally prefer the Firefox style).

Xi0N · 2012-09-07 19:34:11

I have these two packages installed regarding freetype2:

extra/freetype2 2.4.10-1 [installed]
TrueType font rendering library
multilib/lib32-freetype2 2.4.10-1 [installed]
TrueType font rendering library (32-bit)

I shall try firefox, but i prefer chromium... I have been using it for a long time...
So, you say you see the characters in chromium better than I do in my machine? - weird :S

bohoomil · 2012-09-07 19:54:57

OK then: before you do anything else, please take a look at your /etc/fonts/conf.avail and /etc/fonts/conf.d. This is where the font engine is actually tuned. The file 65-nonlatin.conf is the one when you can set priority of your non-latin fonts for a certain language. (The similarly named 40-nonlatin.conf lets you specify whether a font belongs to a serif or sans family, among others.) First, backup the original files, and then place on top of the list the font you'd want to use as a preferred one for Chinese. See if you can find a combination you like. (Of course, make sure you have hinting and subpixel rendering enabled, too.)

In case nothing works for you, you can always grab the files from the repo in my signature (patched freetype2 + customized fontconfig settings). You will find a little preview there (Firefox + Wikipedia homepage) to see if this is the way for you to go.

Edit: I'm not going to recommend Firefox to you because Chrome can do the job decently enough, too. I only feel that I can control Firefox more easily probably due to my rather modest experience with Chrome / Chromium.

Last edited by bohoomil (2012-09-07 19:57:20)

lazyzyf · 2012-09-08 14:12:49

I am Chinese.
I suggest you use wqy-zenhei or wqy-bitmapfont.

Xi0N · 2012-09-09 11:03:09

lazyzyf wrote:

I am Chinese.
I suggest you use wqy-zenhei or wqy-bitmapfont.

This has made the fonts to show as i wanted... thank you!!!

Arch Linux

#1 2012-09-07 19:00:35

Best chinese characters font

#2 2012-09-07 19:31:11

Re: Best chinese characters font

#3 2012-09-07 19:34:11

Re: Best chinese characters font

#4 2012-09-07 19:54:57

Re: Best chinese characters font

#5 2012-09-08 14:12:49

Re: Best chinese characters font

#6 2012-09-09 11:03:09

Re: Best chinese characters font

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