Re: [RFC PATCH 0/3] docs: pdfdocs: Improve alignment of CJK ascii-art

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@kernel.org>]

Em Fri, 25 Jun 2021 18:22:26 +0900
Akira Yokosawa <akiyks@gmail.com> escreveu:

> On Fri, 25 Jun 2021 09:50:59 +0200, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
> > Em Fri, 25 Jun 2021 14:55:24 +0800
> > "Wu X.C." <bobwxc@email.cn> escreveu:
> >   
> >> On Thu, Jun 24, 2021 at 09:06:59PM +0900, Akira Yokosawa wrote:  
> >>> Subject: [RFC PATCH 0/3] docs: pdfdocs: Improve alignment of CJK ascii-art
> >>>
> >>> Hi all,    
> >>
> >> Hi Akira,
> >>  
> >>>
> >>> This is another attempt to improve translations' pdf output.
> >>> I see there is a mismatch in the font choice for CJK documents, which
> >>> causes poor-looking ascii-art where CJK characters and Latin letters
> >>> are mixed used.
> >>>
> >>> One of noticeable examples of such ascii-art can be found in
> >>> Korean translation of memory-barriers.txt.
> >>>
> >>> Hence the author of Korean translation of memory-barriers.txt is
> >>> in the CC list.
> >>>
> >>> At first, I thought the issue could be fixed by simply selecting
> >>> "Noto Sans Mono CJK SC" as both of monofont and CJKmonofont.
> >>> It fixed the mis-alignment in the Chinese translation, but failed
> >>> in the Korean translation.
> >>>
> >>> It turns out that Hangul characters in "Noto Sans Mono CJK SC"
> >>> are slightly narrower than Chinese and Japanese counterparts.
> >>> I have no idea why the so-called "mono" font has non-uniform
> >>> character widths.
> >>>
> >>> GNU Unifont is an alternative monospace font which covers
> >>> almost all Unicode codepoints.
> >>> However, due to its bitmap-font nature, the resulting document
> >>> might not be acceptable to Korean readers, I guess.    
> >>
> >> OK, it works.
> >>
> >> But I still want to say that the display effect of Unifont is really
> >> not good. Unifont's lattice is too small, and only one size.
> >> http://fars.ee/QA1k.jpg	    http://fars.ee/GAAv.jpg
> >> Looks like computers 20 years ago, LOL :)
> >>
> >> It there any chance to use other fonts, like *Sarasa Mono* ?
> >>                                               等距更紗黑體
> >> Looks more beautifull http://fars.ee/DTT6.jpg
> >> But I guess not many people installed it.  
> 
> Thank you for the nice suggestion.
> Yes, Hangul characters in "Sarasa Mono" have the same widths.
> 
> > 
> > Does Sarasa mono looks nice for Japanese, Chinese and Korean
> > (plus latin)?  
> 
> Yes, I tested "Sarasa Mono SC" and it covers all CJK fonts.
> The SC variant has Simple Chinese glyph where other languages
> have their own preferred glyph, but that is same in "Noto Sans
> Mono SC".
> 
> Currently, there is no verbatim/literal blocks in the Japanese
> translation, so I tested with only a short Japanese sentence.
> 
> I'll post a v2 which uses "Sarasa Mono SC" instead of Unifont.
> 
> > 
> > If so, I guess it shouldn't be a problem to use it, as the
> > ./scripts/sphinx-pre-install can be patched to recommend
> > its install.  
> 
> One minor problem might be that the Sarasa font needs manual
> download (and install).
> 
>         Thanks, Akira

If this is not yet packaged as part of texlive packages
on distros, this won't be a minor issue, as we'll need
to find procedures and test it for all distros supported
by the script.

Thanks,
Mauro