| > but then based on my personal experience as print media designer the likes of InDesign are full of various special tricks (and language-specific, too) That seems to concur with an informative article by AtaDistance from 2019 that I read the other day [0]: > ... > The result was InDesign 1.0 J which shipped in early 2001. InDesign J was the first, and only, major software application developed outside of Japan that followed the Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) X4051 typesetting and composition specification (the kumihan “bible”) and traditional Japanese print production methods. > I have covered some basics of Japanese layout before, but a review is helpful for first time readers. I’ll use a mix of my material and McCully’s presentation to explain. > ... > Western created DTP layout is graphics-driven and calculated by margins and font baselines. The western baseline typography model and font metrics is how PostScript and OpenType fonts, and all layout engines evolved. Adobe was well acquainted with the shortcomings of their own font technology and InDesign J got around the problems by adding proprietary Kanji virtual body font metrics and Japanese line break algorithms. None of this exists as an open standard that benefits everybody. > That is fine for InDesign and print production, but web layout and typography via CSS is an entirely different world. There are 3 huge obstacles for good vertical Japanese typography on the web: > * No font metrics for virtual body/em-box glyph space placement: everything has to be accomplished with baseline metrics > * No reliable space control > * No reliable line breaks [0] https://atadistance.net/2019/04/26/the-state-of-css-japanese... |