在 iPhone 上看這個字體的狀況。
我用的系統是 iPhone OS 3.1 Beta 2。
還是造字原則不統一。
完全不懂為什麼「翱翔」寫在一起的時候，兩個字的「羽」會是兩種不同的寫法。
而且「羽」裡頭的點也不應該寫成撇吧。
Nobody writes “羽” in that way.
「食」字旁的字都不對。
最後一筆應該是一點。
The form of the “食” (which means foods or eating) radical is wrong. The final stroke of the left side should be a point, but not two horizontal lines.
鄉的中間部分的最後一筆應該是一點，而不是兩橫。「饗」這個字的中間甚至變成「皂」了。
很奇怪的，居然不是拿「郎」來造這個字。
They are all wrong characters.
「俞」的最上方應該是「人」，不是「入」。
It should be “人”, but not “入”. Notice that the line in the left side, but not the right one, should be longer.
另外一個造字原則不統一的例子。
有的時候是一點，有的時候是一橫。
Sometimes it is a point, sometimes it is a horizontal stroke, You really cannot find if Apple really has a guideline to create this font.
還是字體的問題。
然後，一系列裡頭有「直」的字，也頗為怪異。
基本上也不能夠說把最後一橫變成一個直角是錯，這是某種異體字的寫法。但問題就出在，整個造字過程中似乎也沒有一個統一的原則，有的時候是直角，有的時候是一橫，「值」跟「植」裡頭的「直」居然會不一樣。
The characters which contain the part as “ˋ直” do not follow a standard, too. The final stroke of “直” should be a horizontal line without a vertical line, according to the standard of the Ministry of Education in Taiwan, and Heiti TC does not render these characters in the MOE way.
Well, Heiti TC uses a alternative form of “直”, some calligraphers do so, too. However, it is recommend that to follow the MOE standard. And you can see another problem - the “直” part of “植” is in this way, and “值” is in another way.
Snow Leopard 與 iPhone 的字體問題
之前提到 Snow Leopsrd 上的系統字體有基線位置不對，以及標點符號位置不對的問題，蘋果已經在最近的 beta 當中修正了，但是最近又看了一下，又發現其他的問題。原本以為只是 Mac OS X 10.6 的字體問題，但是最近看了一下，發現 iPhone 上面的字體，也有一樣的問題。
比方說，「請」這個字的右下角，應該是個「月」，不知道為什麼，在蘋果的字體當中，卻變成了一個「円」，這樣一整個不對啊…。
I ever mentioned about the problem of the system font of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - the Chinese punctuation symbols were placed wrong, and the baseline of each character is too low. They fixed the problems in recent beta versions, for example, I am now using the build 10A411, the punctuation symbols look so far so good.
However, I found more problems with the new system font, Heiti TC, and the problems appear not only on Snow Leopard, but also on iPhone OS. The problem is, some Chinese characters are not created with a standard or a guideline, and even some are actually wrong characters.
Here is the example. All characters listed in the picture above contain a part as “青”, which means a color between green and blue, or a Bondi blue like color. The lower part of “青” should be “月”, which means moon, but some characters were not created with “月” but “円” (Japanese Yen). That is quite not right.
The lastest beta of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard uses Heiti TC (黑體-繁) system font for Traditional Chinese. Heiti TC is available on Leopard although the system font of Leopard is Lihei Pro. This font looks really bad, and the bad font could ruin Mac OS X’s user experience no matter how advance Snow Leopard is!
Comparing to the previous system fonts such as Lihei Pro and so on, the glyph of each character of Heiti TC is smaller and placed on a lower baseline.
It results, if you switch the locale of your Mac to Traditional Chinese, you may see the Chinese text is placed too low on the menu bar, the text is too close to the bottom of the menu bar and the space on the top is too large. It makes users feel bad since it lacks the aesthetic of balance.
Another problem is the Chinese comma (， Unicode U+FF0C). Unlike the Simplified Chinese, the Traditional Chinese punctuation marks should be placed on the vertical center but not on the baseline, but Heiti TC places it on the baseline. Therefore, when using such a font to create a document, people will find the document not well formatted and not professional.
Furthermore, the positions of Heiti TC’s punctuation marks are all not consistent. The Chinese Comma is placed on the baseline, and the Chinese Stop is placed on the vertical center. I do not know anyone who use this font although it is available on Leopard, the reason might be that any native Chinese speaker would consider this font is useful.
Apple, as a Mac user, I request you. If you cannot alter the ugly part of the font before the release of Snow Leopard, please keep using Lihei Pro. I can bear that Mac OS X has bugs, but I cannot bear a terrible font!
If you are a Chinese Mac user, and you know some guys working at Apple, please write to them to let them know this issue. Or, you can tell Apple by filing tickets on Open Radar or Apple Bug Reporter website.
Chinese version of the text:
請一人一信抵制蘋果使用 Heiti TC 做為 Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard 預設字體
在最新一版的 Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Developer preview 版本中，可以看到蘋果將系統預設的中文字體，從 Li Hei Pro 換成 Heiti TC－這套字體在 10.5 Leopard 中也可以找到。如果你是 Mac OS X 的中文使用者，您應該想辦法阻止蘋果做出這樣的設計。原因很簡單，Heiti TC 實在是太醜了。
Heiti TC 的第一個大問題，就在於每個標點符號都放在奇怪的位置上。例如，句號是放在垂直中央的部份，但是逗號卻放在對齊基線的位置－就中文排版而言，目前簡體中文是將標點符號統一放在基線位置，而繁體中文則是放在垂直中心位置，但是 Heiti TC 的設計，卻完全不符合其中任何一種排版的要求。換言之，如果這套字體變成系統預設字體，那麼當你瀏覽網頁的時候，等於是看到一整頁完全無法忍受的編排，而如果你使用 Pages 編輯中文文件，也預設 fallback 到這套字體，也等於是容易製作出編排非常不專業而且閱讀體驗極差無比的文件。
如果你希望你在幾個月之後使用的 Mac OS X 的中文系統不是這個樣子，你可以－
- 使用 Apple 的 Bug Report 系統回報這是非常嚴重的用戶體驗問題
- 使用 Open Radar 回報
如果他們不能夠改善 Heiti TC 這套字體的品質，至少維持使用目前的系統字體。
