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

[Akira Yokosawa]

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@xxxxxxxx> 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

> 
> Thanks,
> Mauro
>