For example, Arabic distinguishes between font styles such as naskh, nastaliq, ruq'ah, kufic, diwani, sini, etc. There may be other scripts that require attention with regards to the suitability of current generic font families. Presumably, this problem also affects Japanese and Korean users, and it is possible that the solution may also cover their needs. The question is, how to make it possible to map fonts used in Web/eBook content to system fonts, where needed, in as predictable and effective a way as possible.
Picking up on hints such as substrings like song or hei in the font name is often inadequate. Vendors in China see it as important to be able to substitute existing fonts on the user's system, where needed, in a way that matches Chinese font types, rather than just those generic font families provided by the current specification.
If a user doesn't have the right font on their system, downloading a font with a web page is often not very practical, especially given the high proportion of people accessing the Web via mobile devices in China, some of whom have to pay by bandwidth used. With 7-8 major font types, Chinese fonts don't map very well onto the generic font families described in the CSS3 Fonts spec.įurthermore, there is a particular issue related to the file size of Chinese fonts, which can easily be 10Mb in size.
