La Tecnología

I prefer Macs, but broken Asian fonts...

I have and always will like the Macintosh, because well, it's just sexier.  I enjoy using the system.  I am sensitive to the environment, and I always felt that Windows was an abysmal bore.  I felt energized using the Macintosh.  The later Windows XP has gotten better, and even more so with Windows Vista, with their new appealing interface.

However, half the problem with Windows desktops is the PCs themselves.  I have had countless problems with failed hardware, sometimes these days failed as per design, or just faulty components from cheap manufacturing overseas.  Fortunately, I always had a few computers, so I can swap in and out components and diagnose the faulty component.  However, being overseas, I cannot necessary do that, and my latest and great HP Pavilion's screen went bye bye.  My trusty faithful MacBook, though not as speedy, is fairly sturdy.  It's been dropped even, twice, but it still works.

However, this nonsense with Asian fonts that have missing glyphs, is just annoying.  Windows does not have glamorous fonts at default, but at least the font has all the glyphs, whether the Chinese characters are simplified Japanese Kanji or Chinese P.R.C. hanzi, or whether they are complex traditional characters used in Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Singapore, the glyphs are all there.  But with the Mac OS X, even after several years of its existence, there are missing glyphs.  You cannot imagine typing these characters, only to find the one odd ball out, is substituted for a different looking font, and then spending time searching for a font that incorporates all the glyphs.  This is just backwards.  I guess this issue might be rare if you only work in on of these countries...

Open Office vs. Mac OS X Asian Fonts

Well, I have only dabbled with it for about 15 minutes, and I am not impressed.  I opened up an RTF document (rich text file) and the fonts were not preserved, as they were in Word 2008.  Also, the problem with the Asian fonts not changing, it seems it is a problem with the fonts themselves.  If I try to use the character, for instance, of "learning" (pronounced xue in Chinese, hak in Korean) — 學 — I will not be able to use the font Kai.  I am guessing Mac OS X font of Kai does not have that glyph.

Suffice the say, even though I am not an admirer of Windows in particular, I never had missing glyphs from fonts that use Chinese characters.  This just seems sloppy for Mac OS X.

Oh, yeah, back to Open Office.  My initial impression is that it seems a little sluggish, not as intuitive or robust as Word 2008. Still, it is very functional for basic word processing needs, which is impressive, especially given that it is free.

My final conclusion professionally, if there is opportunity to buy robust fonts on Mac OS X, then issues with missing glyphs should be resolved, otherwise, ugh, I would have to recommend, Windows. Ouch.  For word processing, basic needs, OpenOffice is fine, more robust features, Office 2008 is good.

 

MS Word 2008 vs. Mac OS X Asian Fonts

I am in the process of writing this essay, and I often times I have need to use  some text in Korean Hanguel (한글) and Chinese Characters (漢字).  The problem I am running into is that I unable to select the fonts I want.  I select a font like Kai or a font like 华文楷体, but some characters remain in a different font and seem fixated. （See Image below with missing glyphs highlighted in yellow)

In doing some initial research, I suspect the problem can be partially with Microsoft Mac team, in handling of fonts, formatting as well as documenting the behavior, and a problem with either the Mac's font system and/or the fonts themselves.  It is the ultimate collision of bugs or behaviors on many fronts, but in the end, the result is a partially functional Office on Mac OS X. 

Professionally, if there is a need to do word processing with Asian text, I would be hesitant to recommend MS Word 2008 and Mac OS X as the solution, because there are just too many issues to make the solution viable.

One issue is that Apple still hasn't offered Chinese character support for Korean input systems, and it seems that this extremely annoying auto-switch the input method feature that can't figure out which language one is using; after all Chinese characters can be used in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean*, so a cursor at a Chinese character could be any of these languages.

* Usage of Chinese characters, called Hanja (한자), is often disdained by those of Korean ultra-nationalist ideology because there is a feeling that using Chinese characters represents cultural subjugation toward Chinese culture, despite the fact that literature, history, writing before WWII, famous works, Confucian and Seon Buddhist and other ideologies, etc. made heavy usage of Chinese characters, and that the Korean language (as still spoken in South Korea and the historical Joseon and earlier kingdoms) has been heavily influenced by Chinese Characters over the centuries, regardless if they use the Chinese characters or not.