令 and MS keyboard

[furiop]

In some text editor in Windows 10 when I'm trying to write 令 , I obtain another character (look at the picture).

Why? 

Perhaps in new releases of Windows 10 some Japanese characters are written istead of chinese ones?

Thank you,

Furio

[Hofmann]

A couple reasons:

• Unicode unified certain variants to the same code point.
• US Windows prioritizes Japanese typefaces for display when displaying Han characters.

To change this, you can switch to a Chinese locale by entering your Control Panel → Region → Administrative → Change system locale...

 

AFAIK there is no way to keep your locale and prioritize Chinese typefaces.

[Luxi]

@furiop I have tried to replicate the problem in my Windows 10 devices, with various types of software, but couldn't. 

What's text editor are you using? Have you tried changing the fonts in your editor? What input method? Is it the same with the virtual keyboard? How about handwriting on the virtual keyboard? What version of Windows 10 do you have? It should ideally be the Fall Creators Update released very recently, it has many improvements over previous issues, especially for Chinese language

 

I had lots of problems after fiddling with the locale (was trying to get Cortana to speak with me in Chinese).  Windows 10 is much better at handling languages than any previous versions of windows, but it isn't yet as flexible as it should be. It's moving that way, slowly.  I've never seen any evidence of Japanese being prioritised in any case, unless I select it to be prioritised in the settings.

[Publius]

Hofmann is right. It's a problem with Unicode CJK unification and the way Windows handles fonts.

Read this article for more details and possibly how to fix it while keeping the system locale: https://shajisoft.com/shajisoft_wp/fontlink-for-cjk-on-english-windows-10/

 

In my English Windows 7 the problems described by the OP and the above article also exist. Because the default mapping for MS Sans Serif is:

MSGOTHIC.TTC,MS UI Gothic
MINGLIU.TTC,PMingLiU
SIMSUN.TTC,SimSun
GULIM.TTC,Gulim

I.e. the default order is Japanese > Traditional Chinese > Simplified Chinese > Korean.
When the system tries to display 令, it won't be able to find the glyph in the real MS Sans Serif font, so it will try other fonts mapped to MS Sans Serif, and the first entry where this character can be found is a Japanese font.

When the system tries to display 语, it won't find a match until it hits the third entry SimSun. As a result 语 will be displayed using SimSun while other characters are displayed using MS UI Gothic or PMingLiU.

[Luxi]

Thanks for the link @Publius Interesting. I'll have a look later to see if it still applies, a lot has been happening since Windows 10 was first launched.  

 

I still can't replicate the problem, most of my text editors seem to use YaHei or SimSun.   

Serif and Sans Serif don't look very good, they are slightly misshapen and many strokes are broken, it makes some web sites look rather ugly and hard to read in Chrome. 

 

There have been some changes to Chinese fonts in Windows 10 recently, there was a Microsoft announcement some months ago about YaHei having been tweaked to look nicer - and it does. There's also a slightly quirky font called YouYuan that I like using in Word.

 

 

[furiop]

8 hours ago, Luxi said:

What's text editor are you using?

Notepad++ . On Pleco no problem.

[Publius]

Notepad++ uses Courier New as default font.

You can change it to a Chinese font (e.g. Microsoft Yahei or SimSun) in Settings->Style Configurator (but English text will look ugly).

Or you can create a system-wide fontlink for Courier New in Windows Registry:

1) Run regedit.exe (Registry Editor)

2) Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontLink\SystemLink

3) Right click on the right panel->New->Multi-String Value

4) Change the newly created entry name from "New Value #1" to "Courier New"

5) Doubleclick Courier New, in the Value Data field, write these 4 lines

SIMSUN.TTC,SimSun
MINGLIU.TTC,PMingLiU
MSGOTHIC.TTC,MS UI Gothic
GULIM.TTC,Gulim
6) Click OK

7) Close the Registry Editor and reboot the machine

Done.

 

 

[Hofmann]

Thanks for the instructions, Publius.

 

furiop, if you have a high-density display you might prefer sans-serif typefaces, in which case you can add the following to the top of the list:

MSYH.TTC,Microsoft YaHei UI
MSJH.TTC,Microsoft JhengHei UI
YUGOTHM.TTC,Yu Gothic UI
MALGUN.TTF,Malgun Gothic

 

[furiop]

1 hour ago, Publius said:

Or you can create a system-wide fontlink for Courier New in Windows Registry:

Thank you very much!

In this way Notepad++ can correctly write the character!

Furio

[Luxi]

Thanks for the instructions @Publius    

I had to instal Notepad++  to see this happen, none of the other apps changes 令... Kind of obvious on hindsight since most of my other non Microsoft apps are to do with Chinese.   

However, Microsoft Word shows that the change does happen in Windows 10, even in a preview version of the next Windows 10. What Word does is: you select Microsoft Sans Serif or Consolas or any other non-Chinese 'Font',  type 令, and Word instantly changes the font to the previous Chinese font you used. You get 令 on the screen, not knowing all that went on behind the scenes.

 

 

[furiop]

40 minutes ago, Luxi said:

Microsoft Word

Only Microsoft UI Gothic , MS Gothic, Yu Gothic fonts change the character in Word 97

[Publius]

@furiopYes, they are Japanese fonts. Traditional Chinese fonts (JhengHei, MingLiU) also display this character differently than Simplified Chinese fonts (YaHei, SimSun). The first 丶 will become 一. It's a classical case of one grapheme having multiple glyphs. It usually doesn't bother native speakers of East Asian languages as much as it does language learners. To me they are all the same character written differently, just as 'a' and 'ɑ' all represent the same roman letter 'a'.

 

@LuxiWell, MS Word is smart. As a word processor, it's their job to know which language a given text is in. Spell checker, grammar checker, thesaurus etc depend on it. If you create an empty Word document and paste a snippet of plain text into it, it can auto-detect the language using heuristic algorithm. Furthermore, as you type, it can take hint from the keyboard you're using. For example, if you type 令 using Simplified Chinese - Pinyin, it will automatically set the font to SimSun. However, if you type the same character using Traditional Chinese - Zhuyin, it will change the font to MingLiU. Similarly, if you type 令 (rei) using Japanese IME, it will set the font to Mincho, and you'll see the difference. But for other less sophisticated programs, the display language and system locale are pretty much the only clue as to which language, and subsequently which font, is preferred. And web browsers are a whole nother story. They handle fonts themselves, independent of the system. HTML also has a “lang” tag to tell the browsers how to render the text. If you look at the source code of this page (around line #186), you can see how it works, i.e. the same character is rendered differently according to language.

[furiop]

22 hours ago, Publius said:

It usually doesn't bother native speakers of East Asian languages as much as it does language learners.

In effect, as Outlier etymological dictionary writes in Pleco there are two variants.

Look also 令 vs.命

 

[Publius]

@furiopThat is my point. They may look different to you, but they are allographs of the the same character.