Setting the Default Microsoft Font for Chinese Characters?

[brownbat]

I've set up Microsoft Chinese Input on Windows 7. I've noticed that whenever I enter characters, they appear in a muddy looking font with random line thicknesses, making the characters pretty illegible. Selecting the characters and manually changing the font to "SimHei" or "SimSun" makes the characters readable.

The selected illegible characters just list my default font, "Times New Roman," so I'm not sure what system Chinese font I'm actually getting. I'd gladly delete it.

I've found a way to change the default system font for Chinese characters in earlier versions of Windows (edit a registry key under "GDI?"), but I don't have this registry setting in Windows 7.

Has anyone else successfully set up SimSun or another font as the default font whenever typing Chinese Characters on Windows 7? Anyone else having this same problem?

[Hofmann]

In what are you entering the characters? I have Windows 7 64-bit, and Microsoft Pinyin New Experience Input Style 10.1.7600.0. The input candidates look like they are in SimSun. They are also displayed in SimSun by default in Microsoft Office Word 2007.

http://i48.tinypic.com/15cmyb9.png

[brownbat]

Here's how I fixed this error in Writer:

First I adjusted language settings in OpenOffice Writer:

1) Tools -> Options -> Language Settings -> Languages.

a) Check "Enabled for Asian Languages,"

B) Select "Chinese (simplified) from the drop down.

At this point, the problem was not quite fixed, I still saw a few character blobs. I went back to options and found one more important setting.

2) Tools -> Options -> OpenOffice.org Writer -> Basic Fonts (Asian)

a) Set "SimSun" as default font,

B) Set "SimHei" at 14pt as heading font.

The previous default was "Lucida Sans Unicode," which might have some weird kerning or encoding problems in OOo. Characters often collided, becoming illegible.

I'm not entirely sure why my defaults were not correctly set to SimSun and SimHei. Perhaps this is because I installed OpenOffice before correcting my system wide language settings.

[brownbat]

This was apparently just an OpenOffice error, perhaps stemming from the fact that I installed it before setting up my language settings.

(I thought I posted a reply about that, but it does not appear to have gone through).

[Meng Lelan]

Sorry for me crashing this thread...I'm going to get a new Dell Windows 7 desktop soon, in about a week or so. What is the first thing I should do/input/download so that I can do stuff in Chinese on it?

[brownbat]

All you have to do is go to the "Region and Language" settings before you install other programs, and you probably will not have the trouble I did.

1. start menu, type "Region and Language"

2. "Keyboards and Languages" tab -> "Change Keyboards" -> "Add..."

3. Add the Chinese input methods you want using the checkboxes.

I think that's pretty much it.

[Meng Lelan]

Thanks brownbat that's what I was needing to know. With Vista I also used google pinyin input which I like, I hope Windows 7 can use google pinyin too.

[Hofmann]

It can. Sogou also.

[pufftissue]

Hi everyone, how do you change the default microsoft windows 7 chinese font to whatever I wish?

I have a mac and I love the Chinese fonts that it uses inside Firefox automatically. I find that the bold lines and just the cleanness of it are vastly, vastly superior to Windows, especially at smaller font sizes.

How can I manually do this? The strokes of the default Windows font are just too thin for westerns trying to learn.

Please help!

[Hofmann]

pufftissue, I'd guess that the typeface the Macintosh uses it ST 黑體. Windows doesn't come with that. You may want to consider Microsoft Yahei or Microsoft Jhenghei. See this post on how to change the Chinese typefaces in Firefox.

Edited December 7, 2009 at 05:19 PM by Hofmann

[dadamin]

Hi,

I would like to know how to change the default Chinese Characters on Word Office.

Basically, I set the languages of the keyboard (chinese + french) as mentionned before and the default font is "SimSun" now.

But, I would like to have this font 汉鼎简楷体 - HDZB_36.TTF as a default Word Font.

At the moment, SimSun is the default font and I should change it after with 汉鼎简楷体.

Any idea ?

(you can download "HDZB_36.TTF " for free there : http://www.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/edv/sinopc/chinese_fonts.htm)

Configuration :

Windows 7

Microsoft Office 2007

[Menino80]

Bump, I'm having the same problem. I have installed a new font (汉鼎繁海报) and it shows up in the font menu in word. However, as soon as I type in this font, it switches directly to SanSun. If I highlight the Simsun-font, and try to change it that way, it immediately goes blank. Can anyone tell me why this is? Do I need to install the traditional too? Thank you