Jiu zixing
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Jiu zixing (simplified Chinese: 旧字形; traditional Chinese: 舊字形; pinyin: jiù zìxíng; Wade–Giles: chiu4 tzŭ4hsing2; Jyutping: gau6 zi6jing4; lit. 'Old character form'),[1] also known as inherited glyph form, or traditional glyph form, not to be confused with Traditional Chinese, is a traditional orthography of Chinese characters which uses the orthodox character forms, especially the character forms used in print after the development of movable type printing, but before reformation by national standardization.[2] Jiu zixing formed in the Ming Dynasty, and is also known as Kyūjitai in Japan.
Broadly, jiu zixing refers to all character forms used in printed Chinese before reformation by national standardization, such as xin zixing in mainland China, the Standard Form of National Characters in Taiwan, and List of Graphemes of Commonly-Used Chinese Characters in Hong Kong. Jiu zixing is generally the opposite form of the standards. Some representative books that used jiu zixing include Kangxi Dictionary, Zhongwen Da Cidian, Dai Kan-Wa Jiten, Chinese-Korean Dictionary, and Zhonghua Da Zidian.
Scholars have developed several standards for jiu zixing, but there is no single enforced standard. Variations of jiu zixing can be seen in the Kangxi Dictionary, Old Chinese printing forms, Korean Hanja, some printed documents in Taiwan, and MingLiU in Windows 98 and earlier versions; slight differences may occur between different jiu zixing standards.[3] Some open-sourced communities also develop and maintain jiu zixing standards which are either based on or unify other jiu zixing forms from academic research.
Origin
[edit]During the woodblock printing era, words were usually carved in handwritten form (regular script) as each woodblock is different, making the work to produce each printed book tedious. The development of wooden movable type during the Song dynasty caused the Chinese characters to take on a more rectangular form following the wood texture. Vertical strokes were thickened to reduce engraving loss, while a small triangle was added at the end of horizontal strokes and the start of vertical strokes to improve the legibility of text even after the pieces are worn out by long-term use. As the character styles started to differ widely from regular script, the calligraphic methods used on regular scripts could not be used on movable type characters and a new distinctive style designated for movable type was born. This style was developed fully during the Ming dynasty, which has now evolved into Ming typefaces.[4]
Comparing movable type and woodblock styles, it can be noticed that movable type characters – which are the basis of jiu zixing today – are different from the random and changing nature of handwritten regular script, and emphasize clear strokes and the beautiful, symmetric structure of characters. Movable type characters also emphasize the philology aspects of Chinese characters more so than regular script.[citation needed]
Standardizations
[edit]Kangxi Dictionary
[edit]The Kangxi Dictionary is viewed as a standardization of jiu zixing and its character forms are referenced by multiple standards. In Taiwan it can generally mean jiu zixing. This name may also refer to the computer font TypeLand 康熙字典體. The Kangxi Dictionary has a few taboo words, such as 弘 and 玄, which should be corrected in current use.
Standard printing characters in Korea
[edit]Character forms depicted in KS X 1001 and KS X 1002 can usually be used as jiu zixing, but some fonts may not adhere to the Kangxi Dictionary. For example, the first stroke of 音 is a wilted dot (or vertical dot, 竖点, 
), some components of 儿 are made to[clarification needed] 几, etc.
Kyūjitai in Japan
[edit]Kyūjitai is the character form used before Japan released the JIS X 0218 standard (later expanded to JIS X 2013). In 2004, the revised version JIS X 0213:2004 changed some character forms back to Kyūjitai.[5] Some characters have two or more forms listed.
Inherited Glyphs Standardisation Documents
[edit]The Inherited Glyphs Standardisation Documents is a modern open-source orthography standard compiled by the open-source organization Ichitenfont, mainly defined under the 'Checklist of Inherited Glyphs document. The checklist is conducted under philological research, with care given of orthographical theory, current usage, and aesthetics in traditional orthographies.[6] Mixed components in current standards are separated and normalized to different character forms, and the most representative inherited character form is chosen as the recommended form. The standard also includes other orthographical forms with daily usage which have a legitimate philological source, providing various options to adjust and adapt character orthography on a per-font basis.[7] The standard and its annex are available on GitHub under CC-BY 4.0, along with a supplementary font "I.Ming" which is used as the representative glyphs of the orthography standard, licensed under IPA Font License.[8][9] There are other open-source[10][11][12] and commercial[13][14] fonts providing support for Inherited Glyphs Standardisation Documents standard.
Orthographies used by modern digital fonts
[edit]Most modern font foundries provides various variants of current-generation style Chinese fonts including justfont[15] and Arphic.[16] Current-generation style is a style that generally follows jiu zixing forms and styles, but some strokes or characters are changed to follow current education form, becoming partly xin zixing and not fully following the character forms of jiu zixing or the Kangxi Dictionary.[2] IBM Plex Sans TC, an open-source Traditional Chinese font released in August 2024[17] uses an "amalgam" style which is similar to current-generation style.[18]
Two notable examples of modern jiu zixing digital fonts with widespread use are the default Traditional Chinese system fonts offered on earlier versions of Windows and Mac OS, which are MingLiU/PMingLiU[19][20][21] and Heiti TC[22] respectively. However, the system fonts have been maliciously reported as "incorrect" by opponents[23] and forcing vendors to change them to xin zixing in later versions.
References
[edit]- ^ "Habitat: HanziOldStyles". wenq.org (in Chinese).
- ^ a b JT Foundry. "繁體中文常見的黑體字型". Medium (in Chinese).
- ^ "全港交通路牌字體探古尋源 點解被稱作「監獄體」？ 與日本同源同宗?". 香港01 (in Chinese (Hong Kong)). 27 September 2021.
- ^ "漢字書体の歴史" [History of Kanji Typefaces]. Kinkido Type Laboratory (in Japanese). Archived from the original on 2023-11-30. Retrieved 2024-02-20.
- ^ https://warp.da.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/10217941/www.jisc.go.jp/newstopics/2005/040220kanjicode.pdf (in Japanese)
- ^ "ichitenfont/inheritedglyphs". GitHub. I.字坊 (I.Font Project). 27 August 2024.
- ^ Zonz (2018-03-25). "《傳承字形檢校表》1.10 新版發佈". Archived from the original on 2020-07-14.
- ^ "ichitenfont/I.Ming". GitHub. I.字坊 (I.Font Project). 27 August 2024.
- ^ "開源傳承字形「I.明體」（一點明體）5.00版公開下載". 開源香港 (in Chinese (Hong Kong)). 8 February 2017.
- ^ "LXGW WenKai TC". Google Fonts.
- ^ "LXGW Trad Clear Gothic". GitHubGitHub.
- ^ "TakWolf/ark-pixel-font-inherited". GitHub. 17 August 2024.
- ^ "計畫更新 #5 空明朝體集資最後倒數！最終目標「傳承字形」正式解鎖！". zeczec.
- ^ "Cantonese Font – Heritage 傳承字形 / 全套". Visual Fonts 是像字體. 14 May 2024.
- ^ "走過字體寒冬的春暖花開——專訪金萱字型開發 justfont 團隊 ｜ BIOS monthly". www.biosmonthly.com.
- ^ "金萱的聲音我們聽到了！其他本土字型業者呢？文鼎：我們從未缺席！". Next數位時代. Archived from the original on 24 August 2016.
- ^ "Release @ibm/plex-sans-tc@1.0.0 · IBM/plex". GitHub. Retrieved 1 September 2024.
- ^ "Questions on future CJK fonts · Issue #334 · IBM/plex". GitHub. Retrieved 1 September 2024.
- ^ 許潮文. "許潮文：《為甚麼不推薦新細明體》". 立場新聞 (in Traditional Chinese). Archived from the original on 2021-06-23. Retrieved 2024-08-30.
- ^ 許潮文. "許潮文：《新細明體：早該被時代革除、卻又意外留下的審美遺毒》". 立場新聞 (in Traditional Chinese). Archived from the original on 2021-06-24. Retrieved 2024-08-30.
- ^ "刻石錄：《Why is it aesthetically unpleasing?》" (in Traditional Chinese). Archived from the original on 2020-10-26. Retrieved 2019-02-15.
- ^ "黑體-繁，其實是個好字型" (in Traditional Chinese). Archived from the original on 2009-09-07. Retrieved 2018-01-06.
- ^ In "TCFail - Snow Leopard 繁體中文系統字體修改工具" (in Chinese). Archived from the original on 2013-01-28. Retrieved 2009-09-07. and "Notes on Cocoa的「黑體-繁」筆記" (in Chinese). Archived from the original on 2016-03-22. Retrieved 2016-03-22., the author called out that jiu zixing are "plainly wrong characters", "incorrect", "wrong" and "problematic".