Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 704 Font Library
"Among all of us, you are really the only one who can do it," Zhou Zhi said, "You know that you can print books with a computer now, right?"

"Well, I know, there are now computer typists in the bureau. I heard that the machines are very expensive, and the leaders don't let ordinary people touch them."

"Then do you know how many words can be printed by the machine in your bureau now?"

"Can't all Chinese characters be typed?"

"Of course not. What everyone is using now is a set of national standards issued by the State Administration of Standards of China in 1980 and implemented in 2312. The standard number is GB 1980-760. The basic set contains a total of [-] Chinese characters."

"Then how many Chinese characters are there in our country?"

"Not counting the simplified Chinese characters, the total number of Chinese characters included in the "Kangxi Dictionary" is 35."

"So much difference?" Feng Xueshan was shocked: "Not even a fraction?"

"That's right." Zhou Zhi said, "Of course, this has something to do with the expensive storage unit and the convenience of simplified characters. But in the future, if books are to be typed by computer, if you want to use a computer to sort out ancient books, the current font library will definitely not work."

"so……"

"So I have an idea to design a set of "Kangxi Character Library" for future computer typesetting of ancient books."

"No, no, I don't know so many words..." Feng Xueshan felt dizzy when she heard it.

"You don't need to know them, just follow the description." Zhou Zhi smiled: "One of the important tasks in font design is the design of individual characters, strokes, and radicals;"

"Afterwards, the design draft is converted into a digital image by scanning equipment and stored in the computer; and then through digital fitting, the vector outline of the glyph is obtained."

"The next step is to expand the design and design other words in a combined way."

"Finally, assign codes to all the obtained characters, convert them into a file format that describes the contours of glyphs with specific mathematical functions, and then add instructions to control the display and typesetting effects of the glyphs to form a font library."

"The more I listen, the more I can't understand..."

"It doesn't matter if you don't understand, I will match the individual characters, strokes, and radicals, and then I will ask you to use imitation Song typeface, Song typeface, Kai typeface, and Hei typeface, and draw them on the grid paper I provide you. "

"Since we don't have the relevant computer equipment and font design software, we can only do the extended design work by hand first."

"That is to write all the words one by one."

"All you have to do is these, and I will complete the rest of the proofreading and testing."

"In the end, I will take all the manuscripts to Shudu, to the capital, and generate the font library we need through the most primitive scanning and matching method."

"The purpose of our doing this is to design a large font library that can cover all known traditional Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters, so that it can be done once and for all."

"And things will be simple in the future. We can do subtraction and come up with some deleted versions for people to choose freely, so as to solve the contradiction between the large font library and insufficient computer storage resources."

"Xueshan, you said, expanding the computer font library from more than 6000 characters to more than 7000 characters, is this a major event related to our country's national economy and people's livelihood?"

"I'm fine with just writing." Feng Xueshan relaxed after knowing what she was going to do: "Even if I write [-] characters, I can write [-] words a day, and I can finish it in less than two years."

"Well, sleep now, and we will start this work when we get back."

"it is good."

This work was promised by Zhou Zhi to Mr. Gu. At that time, Zhou Zhi had told Mr. Gu that if the country still did not release the corresponding font library when he entered university, then he would do this work.

Of course, in the absence of design software, the preparatory work can only be done manually, which is bound to be cumbersome.

Just re-engraving nearly 32 Chinese characters into a [-] by [-] grid with [-] bits of information would be a very time-consuming and boring project without software assistance.

This work is relatively simple and just basic.

After having the benchmark typeface, it is possible to use software and basic typeface design to automatically generate different typefaces through digital fitting.

But as long as the basic work is done well, the rest can be done by computer software.

Zhou Zhi has already done some work in the early stage, mainly combining the simplified characters of GB 2312-1980 and the traditional characters of the Kangxi dictionary to form all the Chinese characters needed for this font.

As for the additional English letters and common characters, it is no longer his specialty, and it will be good for others to add it in the future.

Combining the two and removing the repetition, Feng Xueshan's [-] words are actually very close to the truth.

The reason why Zhou Zhi wanted to intervene in this matter was because the current Chinese people had little experience in this matter, so they fell into a misunderstanding.

Chinese characters are hieroglyphs, and the difference from the Latin alphabet is that there are too many character codes.

Today's mainstream approach is to simplify and only include commonly used characters in the input method to meet the needs of most of the time.

But Zhou Zhi thinks that this approach is not very good, because it is actually the [-]-character fonts that take up storage space, not the codes that represent them.

Therefore, it can be done in one step. Collect all the fonts in places where Chinese characters are still used in the Greater China region, including Hong Kong Island, Baodao, Singapore and Malaysia, island countries, and North Korea, as well as places where a large number of Chinese symbols are used. The big character library is compiled.

Specific to the application of the next layer, it can be completed by extracting a subset from the benchmark font library.

At the beginning, only professional printing houses and publishing houses could use large fonts. In the future, with the sharp drop in the price of storage devices and the exponential expansion of device capacity, storage space is no longer the bottleneck of the price of personal computers. In the end, this set of fonts can still enter thousands of households.

This design idea jumps out from the traditional western design idea, and it is no longer just a cure for headaches and feet, but a one-step solution, so as to avoid continuous upgrades, adjustments and versions in the future.

However, the funny thing is that even before Zhou Zhi was reborn, the country hadn't completed this matter.

This is the difference in thinking between the typical pragmatism of engineering and the typical idealism of liberal arts. It is also caused by the lack of cross-disciplinary participation of liberal arts scholars to exert influence when Chinese people design fonts.

I have to say that this has become a pity in the end. Is it worth doing to incorporate all Chinese characters into a computer font library?

The answer is obvious, but the Huaxia clan, who are eager to catch up with the great development of digital technology in world civilization, are still proceeding from reality, and only two words are in their minds-"usable", and they don't care about it.

Now there is even a prediction that there will be no Chinese characters in the future information world; this beautiful language will eventually disappear in the information world; In the great development of information technology, they have once again become a backward nation.

What Zhou Zhi wants to tell those people is that you are all fucking farting.

(End of this chapter)