Typesetting Japanese

Lining numbers with arranged height are used in the most Japanese fonts. In contrast, numbers that can have unevenness on the top and bottom at typesetting are old-style numbers. Old-style n…

When we talk about the figures included in fonts, the terms: “proportional” or “tabular” tend to be slightly complicated. Apart from the default figures “0123456789,” full-width figures “０１２…

I would like to talk about an item called “Expert Forms” in the Form Panel Menu of Illustrator and InDesign – what is it? To put it as simply as I can without using technical terms, “E…

In the previous article, I introduced “discretionary ligature (dlig)” that calls up optional ligature in the Latin font of Hama Mincho Italic as an example. In the case of Japanese fonts, &#…

I brought up “Latin ligature (liga)” in the previous article. In this article, I would like to introduce “discretionary ligature (dlig).” The name “discretionary ligature” may be difficult t…

Designing the combination of two or more characters together is called ligature. In the example in the figure, the subtlety of the degree of sticking with f and t when arranged is solved by …

The character “靱” (jin) used in “強靱” (kyoujin), “靱帯” (jintai), etc. has many variations, and it is an example of a topic that leads to long diatribes from character form fanatics. However, o…

Two types of styles are prepared for the OpenType font fraction. One is “fraction (afrc) with the use of a horizontal line,” and the other is “fraction with the use of a slash (frac).” Prope…

Two types of the character “巷” (chimata) are arranged in the figure. Which character looks more familiar to you? The left character is given in the dictionary. The shape of the right charact…

Metrics kerning is kerning based on information inside the font (set in advance by the font maker). In Japanese metrics kerning, the value is set on the assumption that proportional metrics …

Kerning is used to adjust the spacing between specific characters. Options in the Kerning Menu in InDesign/Illustrator include: Japanese Fixed-Width, Metrics (“Auto” depending on the version…

[Proportional Metrics] in InDesign/Illustrator is a function to narrow the character based on the character width information that fonts have for typesetting with narrowed spacing between ch…

There is a function called [Narrowed Spacing Between Characters] in InDesign/Illustrator. While tracking explained in the previous entry is narrowing the spacing between characters evenly, t…

There are various functions in Adobe InDesign/Illustrator that can be used for narrowed spacing between characters. Which function do you often use? In InDesign, there are [Kerning], [Tracki…

It has been previously explained that the OpenType features have GPOS (making adjustments by moving the glyph position) and GSUB (replacing the glyph). Starting here, and over the next sever…

At this time, I prepared a sample illustration of recomposition that can be done by using the TP Sky series. Although all kanji characters are the same, kana characters are recomposed to hig…

The FitFont simulator in the Type Project website corresponds to not only the recomposition of Japanese and Latin, but also the recomposition of kanji and kana. Regarding the fitting procedu…

The OpenType features have a function to “make adjustment by moving the glyph position” and another function to “replace the glyph.” The former is called GPOS and the latter is called GSUB. …

When recomposing kanji and kana to a different font, different systems may be combined, such as Mincho typeface and san-serif typeface. In such cases, it is easy to blend them to fit in when…

For example, the shapes of the small script “ゃ,” and the prolonged sound mark “ー” differ when the character string of “にゃー” is placed in horizontal typesetting and vertical typesetting. As i…