Re: release-notes.zh_CN
On Mon, Dec 11, 2006 at 02:11:24AM +0100, Danai SAE-HAN wrote:
>
> From: Ming Hua <minghua@rice.edu>
>
> > 另外我有两点想法：
> >
> > 一、Debian 安装程序和安装手册虽然由不同的人负责翻译，但是两者的版面格式
> > 大致相同，比如中文和英文之间加半角空格，用半角括号，等等。Release notes
> > 的中文版面格式和这两个翻译完全不一样。从界面一致性的角度看，有没有必要和
> > 安装程序及安装手册保持相似的格式？
>
> I subscribe exactly what you say in your 第一想法. The layout is not
> exactly consistent: half-width and full-width characters are used
> without much regard for typesetting rules (no accusation or reproach
> intended).
Given that different projects are led by different people, and there
seems to be no official typesetting or layout setting for simplified
Chinese, this is not surprising.
> I'm convinced that the angle from which we should make up such
> typesetting rules should be from a LaTeX perspective. It is after all
> the engine which finally produces the PDF documents. The (X)HTML
> language is still too much in its infancy in order to distill
> typographical rules from it.
>
> I have a few suggestions.
[specific LaTeX typesetting suggestions]
For the case in point, Debian release notes is written in Debian SGML,
and both the HTML and LaTeX are auto-generated. So I suppose using the
specific LaTeX CJK typesetting syntax is not really practical here.
> Hanzi in italics are downright ugly. A better way to emphasize hanzi
> is to underline them, since the baseline for each hanzi is exactly the
> same (unlike roman characters like "g" or "j"). An ideal way would be
> to use a different font altogether, but we are (currently) only
> limited to two fonts provided by Arphic.
>
> The old tfm-arphic-* used freetype1-tools which allowed the ad hoc
> creation of italic font shapes. The new latex-cjk-chinese-arphic-*
> packages are instead created with Fontforge and use Type1 fonts and
> fontmaps. The only way to get italics is to create such a font with
> Fontforge "skewing" each font shape with roughly 10 degrees. This
> takes too much time, effort and HD space IMHO, and italic hanzi are
> ugly anyway.
>
> Any suggestions for DFSG-free fonts to be packaged that can act as
> italics? Or shall we stick to underlining hanzi with emphasis?
I also think italic Hanzi is ugly and shouldn't used at all. I also
think Kai style works great as emphasis when the main typeface is
Song/Ming style. I believe this is even used in formal Chinese
publications.
> P.S.: debiandoc2latex now works with the updated latex-cjk. For
> example, "debiandoc2latexpdf -l zh_{TW,CN} -s ./bin/fixlatex *.sgml"
> now works without problems.
Yes, I tested it the other day and it worked. Thanks a lot for helping
to fix that bug.
Ming
2006.12.13
Reply to: