Cantonese Font 粵語字體

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粵語字體能如何使用？

粵語字體是我們「是像字體」第一成員。是像字體，就像已經廣泛使用的emoji 🥳 一樣，為傳統黑白字形注入彩色圖片。 無需特殊學習或者訓練。

粵語字體利用這些彩色圖片，幫助廣東話的教育與學習。 你只需要手寫、倉頡、語音、或者複製任何繁體字，將字型改為粵語字體， 所有文字就會自動加上粵拼。支援各種軟件程式，無需聯網。

驚艷與智慧的結合

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下載項目

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如何支持粵語字體？

項目得以繼續，有賴用戶支持。

• 作為個人用戶，你可以
  • 在下載字型時候捐款，
  • 購買我們其他的「是像字型」,
  • 寫評語，以及
  • 介紹比朋友（非常重要，因為有用嘅嘢冇人用，等於冇做過);
• 作為一個機構，你可以
  • 資助字體特定延伸項目（見下Roadmap), 或者
  • 設立定期資金捐獻
• 如果你是設計師，或者出版商，可以聯絡我們、使用我們創立的一系列技術，為你的成品 加工排版

我們團隊成員接受顧問工作。技術專業範圍包括深度資料處理 automation pipelines (Elixir, Python, and Javascript), 技術性排版 (LaTeX), 以及矢量圖像設計及自動化 vector graphic design & scripting (Adobe Illustrator). 當然，我們對 字型創作、工程學 (font engineering) 以及 廣東話語言學 上有一定認識。

粵語字體經費來源是我們的儲蓄及正職收入。我哋嘅正職係… 教跳舞 🙃。 如果你喺香港，又想學阿根廷探戈 Argentine Tango，可以嚟我哋銅鑼灣 studio。Eliana 係全港唯一來自阿根廷，世界上首屈一指、多次代表阿根廷出席世界博覽、[下刪1000字💖] 嘅舞蹈家。初班有廣東話翻譯。 詳情可見 www.eli.dance 🙂

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用戶評語

Cantonese Visual Fonts is a game-changer for anyone learning Cantonese and exploring traditional characters. The added Jyutping pronunciations on top of the characters make it incredibly convenient to use on a daily basis to read. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

PTK (beginner)

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FAQs

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Deep Dives

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Versioning, Changelog, and Roadmap

Versioning

The font software adopts semantic versioning. The version number has three parts: x.y.z, standing for:

x: major version. This is reserved for a complete font re-build, where unknowable number of pronunciation changes may happen. If this happens, the last major version will still be available so users that prefer the previous version can always download the previous version.

y: minor version. This increments when significant new features are added or changed. Examples include entire new class of categories in the Phrasebook, or new language availability for the Phrasebook.

z: patches. This increments with bug-fixes, added chars, added words, or added categories and terms in the Phrasebook.

I personally dislike getting subscription emails, so patches are definitely not announced anywhere except in the changelog.

Changelog

1.1.5 (2023-05-18)

Minor patch.

Fix: monochrome render of 碟 showed character twice in overlapping ways.

Add: +104 (8471 total).

1.1.4 (2023-05-09)

* Colored layers for words now share the same side-bearings as monochrome layers (i.e., colored layered are center-aligned horizontally). This improves the spacing in a way that is particularly notably on words containing narrow chars such as 革命

* Chars 字: +283 (8,367 total). New selections are mostly from 詩經.大雅+小雅, with minor additions from recent political / science articles on Wikipedia

* Words 詞: +4

* Sound corrections: 咸碟, 鹹碟, 對話, 聿 (now with 歪讀 leot6 instead of 正讀 jyut6 )

* non-phrasebook mode no longer erroneously replace Cantonese and Jyutping

Known problems: 好學生, 曾孫女, despite addition of new word ligatures, are incorrectly segmented as 好學.生, 曾.孫女. This is reflective of a larger problem: longer features must be placed in a higher precedence lookup, instead of randomly as now. This impacts the whole feature set (!)

1.1.2

First public release.

Roadmap

Cantonese Font is feature-complete and stable. The following is my wishlist / todo-list (not in any order) around this project:

1. PDF manual. This would be bi-lingual, including screenshot/instructions for using the font. Instructions would include (0) authoritative compatibilities, (1) install/uninstall on different platforms, (2) StyleBot/Chrome setup for web-browsing on different OS, (3) mixing with Latin / Zh fonts, (4) enabling ligatures in apps that does not turn on by default (Office, I think), and (5) listing of chars and Phrasebook terms/categories.
2. Cantonese linguistic categories. Using a syntax of Canto.___(n), exhaustively tally linguistic aspects of Cantonese. An example is Canto.measure(n) which shows all the measure words (個, 隻, 支, …); another example is Canto.particles(n) for 啦, 喎, 啩. These should be helpful for systematic study or teachers preparing teaching material.
3. 100% traditional characters coverage. CJK (Chinese-Japanese-Korean) characters are complicated in their encoding and usage in different variant. At the first steps of this project, I started with commonly used characters (to ensure they are pronunciable Zh-T entries) and expanded by patching upwards. A complementary approach is to run through the full list of Unicode CJK codepoints, filter out for what is Zh-T and have one or more Cantonese pronunciations. This requires fast access to UniHan and Rime, and will have to wait for the completion of the Elixir libraries UniHan (Kip Cole) and ExCantonese.
4. Re-compute pronunciations. v1 of the font was constructed when I knew far less about the idiosyncracies of Cantonese NLP. Knowing what I know, I think there are better approaches once we can have user feedback.
5. Website revamp. The WordPress landing page would be replaced by an Elixir-Phoenix-Ash setup. This opens up possibilities for much more interesting real-time interactive experiences, that are exposed by UniHan / ExCantonese. (A little teaser: with these libraries, we are able to answer questions like, “which jyutping have the most characters mapping to it?”, “how many characters are there for each radical?”, or “what characters have an onset of f and a tone of 2?”) The text-editor workflow would also means less barrier to writing about Canto / font blog posts. (Not to leave you hanging: the sound that maps to the most character is “jyu4”, with over 30 characters. There is a great deal of low-usage characters that contains 俞 with different radicals.) It may also be possible to enable dynamic processing / SVG generation, using user-supplied styles.
6. Chinese / Spanish / Italian website internationalization. Awaits new website architecture.