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Chinese Fonts within Indesign

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
August 23, 2018
4 replies
42529 views

I would like to use a chinese font (SimSun) within Indesign. Can I use this font with creative cloud or do I need to purchase a separate license for the font?

capbooks

Correct answer Abambo

No problem to use that font with Indesign, as it came with your computer and it is embeddable. But...there is a much better font available that you may even use on the web if you like. That font is available for free from Google fonts and Adobe.

The font is great as it contains major Asian character sets (Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean and English) and it is available in 7 weights (SimSun is only available in one weight).

With Google, the font is called NoTo, Adobe calls it Source Han. It's available with and without serifs.

The Typekit Blog | Introducing Source Han Sans: An open source Pan-CJK typeface

Google Noto Fonts

The Google link shows all flavours of the Noto font family. The Asian CJK fonts come in different sets. Example:

Noto Sans CJK SC for Simplifyed Chinese etc

This is a quote from Google:

Language-specific OpenType/CFF (OTF)
Each font sets one language as the default. Note that each language-specific font does support all four languages and includes the complete set of glyphs. However, you need an application program that can invoke an OpenType locl GSUB feature (e.g. Adobe InDesign) to access language-specific variants other than the default language.

See here for more information: Noto CJK – Google Noto Fonts and/or google for "Noto" and/or "Source Han".

Source Han synchronizes automatically via Typekit, NoTo does not account for your Typekit fonts installed. Choose one or the other, except for the name, they are the same.

A

AnyaKROSCH

Participating Frequently

And in Illustartor?

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Ask here:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator/bd-p/illustrator?page=1&sort=latest_replies&filter=all

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Abambo

Correct answer

Community Expert

No problem to use that font with Indesign, as it came with your computer and it is embeddable. But...there is a much better font available that you may even use on the web if you like. That font is available for free from Google fonts and Adobe.

The font is great as it contains major Asian character sets (Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean and English) and it is available in 7 weights (SimSun is only available in one weight).

With Google, the font is called NoTo, Adobe calls it Source Han. It's available with and without serifs.

The Typekit Blog | Introducing Source Han Sans: An open source Pan-CJK typeface

Google Noto Fonts

The Google link shows all flavours of the Noto font family. The Asian CJK fonts come in different sets. Example:

Noto Sans CJK SC for Simplifyed Chinese etc

This is a quote from Google:

Language-specific OpenType/CFF (OTF)
Each font sets one language as the default. Note that each language-specific font does support all four languages and includes the complete set of glyphs. However, you need an application program that can invoke an OpenType locl GSUB feature (e.g. Adobe InDesign) to access language-specific variants other than the default language.

See here for more information: Noto CJK – Google Noto Fonts and/or google for "Noto" and/or "Source Han".

Source Han synchronizes automatically via Typekit, NoTo does not account for your Typekit fonts installed. Choose one or the other, except for the name, they are the same.

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer

H

hilsralive

Known Participant

I have been trying to use Google font Noto and when I use it some of the Chinese characters turn into squares which indicate a problem. When styling in SimSun thay are ok, but only one weight is a problem for the design. I might have found a solution but adding a stroke outline in my style sheets to make it look bolder.
I'd rather choose a font with mutiple weights if possible. Any ideas?

Thanks

Abambo

Community Expert

Sorry, I did not see this earlier:

The NoTo-Font sets from Google (and the Adobe equivalent) have expressively been developped to avoid those "squares". And I have never seen those squares with these sets.

I've seen squares, however, when using Chinese texts and a Japanese font set, as in a Japanese font set only a subset of Chinese characters is included.

I'm doing typesetting with Chinese character sets since very early Indesign versions. Formerly I used the same trick for getting bold (outlining), but that needs to be applied carefully, not to make the characters illisible.

Just to add:

https://www.google.com/get/noto/help/faq/ -- there is a link if you suspect a bug in a font.

What is the program and version you're using? What is your OS and version?

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer