Date: 2004 Oct 04Venue: Sofitel Central Plaza Hotel,

Bangkok, ThailandPresented By: CHIN Chee-Kai

Deputy Chair,Information Exchange Technical CommitteeITSC, Singaporec/o Infocomm Development Authority of SingaporeNo. 8 Temasek Boulevard #14-00, Suntec Tower 3Singapore 038988Republic of Singaporecheekai@SoftML.Net

Points of Consideration

Ability to conveniently stylize mixed languagesMixing fonts with different sizes and/or fonts with different locale in a convenient and searchable manner will be very desirable.

Maintain searchability of data in spite of rendering markup A styling requirement that caters to Asian language requirements should strive to avoid requiring extra markups, hints or special requirements on the source data, so much so that searching for the text in the usual manner will result in data not being found.

Example 1

Romanji:

Mangataimu

English1:

MANGA Time

English2:

Comics Time

Hanyu: M

an Hua Shi Jian

Motivation: The author has found it necessary to quote the original Japanese names in native Japanese, instead of translating into Chinese characters using either Romanji, Hanyu Pinyin, tone-based or meaning-based character

translation. Using original Japanese here also allows the author to sound more authentic and original.

None of these re-wording looks pleasant or original.

GB:

Example 2

Motivation: In this daily stock market commentary, the author finds a need to quote the original English names, such as “Boeing”, “Garuda International Airlines”, or the more accurate Romanji equivalent “Minebea” for the Japanese company. This is important because the proper names can only be fully conveyed in English.

Formatting Highlights: The 2 blue lines enclose the normal Chinese character line spacing. Yet, when English mixed-content occurs, such line spacing is exceeded and the English text “overflows” into the next line a little, as indicated by the green line. When this happens, we also find that the Chinese lines on left and right columns do not align, even though it is common and style-wise elegant to bring every line into alignment between the left and right columns.

Example 3

Motivation: In this tabular report on horse racing, a common activity in most Chinese speaking societies, the names of horses are usually in 2 to 4 Chinese characters. When tabulated, however, the alignment and spacing have to be such that the boundaries of columns are met for visual reading pleasure and easier search for the right horse name.

Formatting Highlights: Chinese horse names are fully justified. Note that unlike English-based full justification, the sizes of the characters themselves are not varied, but the inter-spacings are varied to match the boundary constraints.

Searchability Considerations: In the 2-character case on the first orange circle, and in the absence of proper styling, the author may insert 2 hard spaces to create the effect of full justification. But this would cause the name to be unsearchable in the natural manner.

Search for:Search for:

NOT FOUND!FOUND

–?? Unexpected Behavior for Searching ??–

Example 4

Motivation: Mixing English with Chinese characters is also commonly found in property listings, tables and comparison charts. The English property names are important to provide accurate location naming, in case the Chinese translations veer away from the familiar English-sounding names. In the header row, there are both single-line titles and double-lined titles.

Formatting Highlights: The English property names are formatted using variable-sized fonts, allowing compact tables to be tabulated. Note that the English characters are not half-sized fixed fonts found in some Chinese fonts, but rather, they are variable-sized fonts formatted as in any normal English text.

The Mayfair – Variable-size font

The Mayfair – Fixed-size font

Example 5

Motivation: Mixing different Chinese fonts, as well as formatting them in a slanted fashion, are common features found in Chinese advertisements. This is beyond just wanting a special presentation, but is a common need indeed. For example, in this tour classified advertisement found in a local newspaper, the collectively slanted listing of tour features catches attention more readily. In the black-based star stamp situated in the centre, the 4 Chinese characters that says “brought to you specially only by us” also immediately focuses the reader’s attention.

Formatting Highlights: Note that the characters are slanted, and appear smooth on the strokes and dots without obvious aliasing effects.

The green circled region highlights differently-sized fonts being used in a single line. This is an example where the variation in font sizes is not done randomly, but instead, follows closely the phoneme formed by the characters. For instance, the 1st character means “with” or “follow”. The 2nd to 4th character counting from left forms the name of the person featured in the advertisement. The 5 th to 8th characters describe place names. The last 3 characters means “7-day tour”.

Example 6

Motivation: It is common in Chinese name listings, such as those found in newspaper advertisements of congratulations and obituaries, to align the first character (the surname character) across different lines. We see in this example that all the names listed are of surname Chén.

Formatting Highlights: We see the left-hand-side style of colon with a right-justified, smaller font used to describe the relationship of the name with the person involved.

For example, the first line says “Husband”, and second line says, “Filial son”, and so on. This requires a fixed, vertically centered formatting across all the lines in the list, something that is less commonly seen in English.

We also see mixed font-sizes being used across the lines. This is not because of a simple nice-to-have formatting. Instead, it is key in reducing the importance of the left-hand-side characters that depict the relationship in preference to more attention given to the right-hand-side characters that list the names.

Example 7

Motivation: Each of the two smaller rows describe the relationship of the person involved with the advertising persons, and so the meaning is lost if the two smaller rows are not formatted within the same larger row.

Formatting Highlights: The circled characters are 2 lines being formatted within the same larger horizontal row. In addition, the font size of the smaller line is actually smaller than half the point size of the larger row. This means that the formatting does not just involve halving the point size to contain the smaller rows, but instead, involves use of font of the designated size that fits in the smaller rows.

Less than half the height of major row

Summary

Ability to conveniently stylize mixed languages

Maintain searchability of data in spite of rendering markup