Re: [tlug] ja fonts

[Jens Oliver John <lists@example.com>]

On Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 10:15:08AM +0100, Darren Cook wrote:
> I've a new notebook, with Linux Mint 18.1, xfce (the first notebook
> where I've not had to pay the Microsoft tax, and not had to set up dual
> boot).
> 
> Getting the IME up and working, in both Japanese and Chinese, was the
> easiest it has ever been [1][2]. Almost straightforward!
> 
> The last thing I need to sort out is that the Japanese fonts are not
> brilliant. They look quite cursive, clashing with the surrounding text.

Some free fonts of reasonable quality which are available on most Linux
distros (sometimes through a TeX package) include:

  * IPAPMincho (IPA P明朝)
  * IPAGothic (IPAゴシック)

The best fonts I've personally used for screen display are:

  * Adobe Kozuka Gothic Pro
  * Adobe Kozuka Mincho Pro
  * Hiragino Mincho Pro
  * Hiragino Gothic Pro

> IIRC, Google now has two full unicode fonts. Is the noto sans font
> something I can install as the default system-wide font? ...poking
> around, I notice the fonts-noto metapackage is already installed. (But
> it seems to be made up of dozens of fonts.)

You want to modify fontconfig's font preference list. The way glyphs are
selected works by going through a preference list of fonts and pick the
glyph from the first font that provides it. In order to configure
Japanese `Mincho` fonts is by adding them to the `serif` font family
after the font your main Latin glyphs come from. `Gothic` fonts usually
belong to the sans family, though you can use Sans or Mincho everywhere.

You can create ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf with a preference list as
explained here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/fonts#Fallback_font_order_with_X11.

As families, use serif or sans-serif or monospace as explained. The font
family names Noto Sans, Noto Sans CJK etc you get from running `fc-list | grep Noto`.