Abstract:

Because a typical Asian typeface can consist of more than 12,000 glyphs, traditional scalable outline-based fonts require ~5-10 MBs of memory. This requirement is particularly problematic in mobile devices (e.g. cell phones and PDAs) and embedded systems (e.g. car navigation systems)where memory is at a premium. Existing commercial solutions (e.g. by Bitstream and Monotype Imaging) represent glyphs using simplified uniform-width strokes. However, these light-weigh (~250 KBs) stroke-based fonts lack the detail, expressiveness, and variety needed for optimal legibility and true cultural acceptance (Figure 1). Although METAFONT [Knuth 1986] is stroke-based and provides sufficient detail and expressiveness, it requires the type designer to be proficient in mathematics, rasterization and programming.