Re: [tlug] Pretty Japanese fonts?

[CL <az.4tlug@example.com>]

John Fremlin wrote:
> Thanks for everybody who has helped out so far!
>
> John Fremlin wrote:
> > Gernot Hassenpflug wrote:
> > > Hi John, glad you got that to work OK.  Like Stephen, I'm curious what
> > > the audience did not like. After all, these are fonts designed by
> > > Japanese themselves. Do they have any positive likes? Sadly, many
> > > researchers in the scientific sphere seem to like brush-stroke-style
> > > (gyou-shotai) bold characters for presentations. Headache in 10
> > > seconds....
> > I had tried the IPA fonts before I started whining about it to the list 
> > and you.
>
> I've asked around and delved into the issue a bit further.
>
> The font I was using was Cyberbit. My boss, Mr Kuroda, dislikes it 
> because it is too regular -- it doesn't use a brush stroke style and so 
> does not "appear Japanese". I suppose this is what Gernot is referring 
> to regarding gyou-shotai.
>
> Mr Huang, a coworker from Shanghai, tells me that this font is of the 
> "song" type of Chinese font (the "hei" type is like sans-serif).
>
> All in all, it seems that this problem is not confined to LaTeX, but 
> that generally the free fonts for Japanese are not very beautiful. This 
> page seems to confirm it 
> http://my.opera.com/aikishugyo/blog/show.dml/1707685
>
> Just to confirm, I've tried all three font families offered by CJK LaTeX 
> Mincho, Gothic and Marumoji and they were all met with disapproval.
>
> I think that in order to please my Japanese audience, a brush stroke 
> style font is required. Any ideas very welcome! Has there been any 
> progress on this front recently?
>
> (When I was in China, on the other hand, people often commented that my 
> default font in Linux was much nicer than the MS Windows XP one.)

What I did was to splash out about Yen 1,500 for a remaindered nengajo 
making program (company name is Agenda) and used the "3,000 Fonts" CD to 
build a selection.  They are in .ttf and .ttc format and all work 
wonderfully with Kubuntu and straight Debian.  The font viewing feature 
in KDE4.2 even renders them fairly closely to what my HP Photosmart 
prints, too.

--
CL