Meiryo
Encyclopedia
is a Japanese
sans-serif
gothic typeface
. Microsoft bundled Meiryo with Office Mac 2008 as part of the standard install, and it replaces MS Gothic as the default system font for Vista
on Japanese systems.
It was decided that a new Japanese font was needed, as the current ones (mainly MS Gothic and MS Mincho) are incompatible with Microsoft's ClearType
subpixel rendering
technology: Meiryo is intended to increase legibility of characters on LCD screens. ClearType
has been available in Windows for Latin fonts since the release of Windows XP
in October 2001. However, unlike Latin fonts which use the ClearType hinting system for all sizes, the Japanese fonts distributed with Windows included embedded bitmaps versions of the fonts in small sizes. Although fonts using only hinted CJK glyphs exist (such as Arial Unicode), they had not been distributed with Windows prior to Vista.
According to Tom Rickner of Ascender Corporation
, who helped program and font-hint it, Meiryo is one of the first Japanese fonts created on and for the computer screen and took two years to create and engineer.
, introduced with Windows 7 and is also available as an update in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Similar to MS Gothic, the Meiryo UI fonts are bundled with the same Meiryo TTC files of respective weights.
, regarded as a highly readable font. The font's baseline
was raised slightly to improve readability when mixing Latin and CJK
texts. Meiryo glyphs for kanji
and kana also have a height-to-width ratio of 95:100.
In previous Japanese fonts distributed with Windows, embedded bitmap
glyphs are used whenever font size is set to around 9 points
. Unlike previous fonts designed for CJK
environments, Meiryo contains no embedded bitmaps. To improve readability under small font sizes without using embedded bitmaps, TrueType
hinting language was used for stroke-reduction. Similar technology was used on MingLiu and PMingLiu versions 5.03.
Meiryo is developed to comply with JIS X 0213
:2004 and can also use the newest set of personal name characters
provided by the Japanese Minister of Justice. In addition, it contains OpenType
tables for JIS78, JIS83, JIS90 forms for legacy usages.
Meiryo supports following OpenType layout features for Cyrillic
, Greek
, Han Ideographic
, Kana
, Latin
scripts: nalt, afrc, dnom, dlig, frac, fwid, hwid, hkna, ital, jp78, jp83, jp90, numr, qwid, ruby, sinf, zero, smcp, c2sc, liga, sups, twid, vkna, vrt2, vert, kern.
Meiryo also contains glyphs not normally accessible without font editor. These glyphs include circled 00, 51-100; negative circled 00, 21-100, a-z, A-Z, kana; (rounded) square-enclosed characters, negative (rounded) square-enclosed characters; 2x2 CJK words.
The italic version of Meiryo only provides italicized glyphs for the Latin alphabet as written Japanese is traditionally not italicized.
, Meiryo is distributed as two TrueType
Collection files, with regular and bold glyphs stored in separate files. Each file also contains an italic variant of the font.
As stated earlier, the font is included with the Windows Vista
operating system.
For Windows XP
, the font has become available free of charge by obtaining the Japanese version of Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Express Edition
and electing to install the Microsoft Silverlight runtime. Downloading and installing the Japanese ClearType fonts for Windows XP
from Microsoft also makes Meiryo available on Windows XP
.
Meiryo is also distributed with Japanese version of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac
and Microsoft Office 2010 beta.
font which is now used by London Underground
as New Johnston. The Latin characters were designed by Matthew Carter
, the British-born creator of the Verdana
font, and are visibly similar to characters from Verdana
. By having a font designed by a combination of Japanese and Latin font experts, Microsoft
strived to create a font in which written English and Japanese could present themselves well together side-by-side on the screen. American Tom Rickner of Ascender Corporation
did extensive programming and font hinting for Meiryo. Rickner helped create the first TrueType
fonts at Apple and did all the font hinting for Microsoft
’s Georgia and Verdana
fonts. According to Rickner, Meiryo is one of the first Japanese fonts created on and for the computer screen and took two years to create and engineer.
is メイリョウ.
According to Eiichi Kōno, the name was chosen for its exotic-sounding pronunciation and its compactness.
Although it is a proportional font, the font name does not contain a 'P' to indicate this in Windows font lists as with ＭＳ Ｐゴシック and ＭＳ Ｐ明朝.
for the Meiryo font.
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
sans-serif
Sans-serif
In typography, a sans-serif, sans serif or san serif typeface is one that does not have the small projecting features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. The term comes from the French word sans, meaning "without"....
gothic typeface
Typeface
In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....
. Microsoft bundled Meiryo with Office Mac 2008 as part of the standard install, and it replaces MS Gothic as the default system font for Vista
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...
on Japanese systems.
It was decided that a new Japanese font was needed, as the current ones (mainly MS Gothic and MS Mincho) are incompatible with Microsoft's ClearType
ClearType
ClearType is a trademark for Microsoft's implementation of subpixel rendering technology. ClearType attempts to improve the appearance of text on certain types of computer display screens by sacrificing color fidelity for additional intensity variation. This trade-off is asserted to work well on...
subpixel rendering
Subpixel rendering
Subpixel rendering is a way to increase the apparent resolution of a computer's liquid crystal display or Organic Light Emitting Diode display by rendering pixels to take into account the screen type's physical properties...
technology: Meiryo is intended to increase legibility of characters on LCD screens. ClearType
ClearType
ClearType is a trademark for Microsoft's implementation of subpixel rendering technology. ClearType attempts to improve the appearance of text on certain types of computer display screens by sacrificing color fidelity for additional intensity variation. This trade-off is asserted to work well on...
has been available in Windows for Latin fonts since the release of Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
in October 2001. However, unlike Latin fonts which use the ClearType hinting system for all sizes, the Japanese fonts distributed with Windows included embedded bitmaps versions of the fonts in small sizes. Although fonts using only hinted CJK glyphs exist (such as Arial Unicode), they had not been distributed with Windows prior to Vista.
According to Tom Rickner of Ascender Corporation
Ascender Corporation
Ascender Corporation is a digital typeface foundry and software development company located in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village, Illinois in the United States...
, who helped program and font-hint it, Meiryo is one of the first Japanese fonts created on and for the computer screen and took two years to create and engineer.
Meiryo UI
Meiryo UI is a version that uses condensed kanaKana
Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...
, introduced with Windows 7 and is also available as an update in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Similar to MS Gothic, the Meiryo UI fonts are bundled with the same Meiryo TTC files of respective weights.
Characteristics
Meiryo was designed as the enhanced version of VerdanaVerdana
Verdana is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter for Microsoft Corporation, with hand-hinting done by Thomas Rickner, then at Monotype. Demand for such a typeface was recognized by Virginia Howlett of Microsoft's typography group...
, regarded as a highly readable font. The font's baseline
Baseline (typography)
In European and West Asian typography and penmanship, the baseline is the line upon which most letters "sit" and below which descenders extend.In the example to the right, the letter 'p' has a descender; the other letters sit on the baseline....
was raised slightly to improve readability when mixing Latin and CJK
CJK
CJK is a collective term for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, which is used in the field of software and communications internationalization.The term CJKV means CJK plus Vietnamese, which constitute the main East Asian languages.- Characteristics :...
texts. Meiryo glyphs for kanji
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
and kana also have a height-to-width ratio of 95:100.
In previous Japanese fonts distributed with Windows, embedded bitmap
Bitmap
In computer graphics, a bitmap or pixmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to...
glyphs are used whenever font size is set to around 9 points
Point (typography)
In typography, a point is the smallest unit of measure, being a subdivision of the larger pica. It is commonly abbreviated as pt. The point has long been the usual unit for measuring font size and leading and other minute items on a printed page....
. Unlike previous fonts designed for CJK
CJK
CJK is a collective term for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, which is used in the field of software and communications internationalization.The term CJKV means CJK plus Vietnamese, which constitute the main East Asian languages.- Characteristics :...
environments, Meiryo contains no embedded bitmaps. To improve readability under small font sizes without using embedded bitmaps, TrueType
TrueType
TrueType is an outline font standard originally developed by Apple Computer in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript...
hinting language was used for stroke-reduction. Similar technology was used on MingLiu and PMingLiu versions 5.03.
Meiryo is developed to comply with JIS X 0213
JIS X 0213
JIS X 0213 is a Japanese Industrial Standard defining coded character sets for encoding the characters used in Japan. This standard extends JIS X 0208. The first version was published in 2000 and revised in 2004 . As well as adding a number of special characters, characters with diacritic marks,...
:2004 and can also use the newest set of personal name characters
Jinmeiyo kanji
The are a set of 861 Chinese characters known as the "name kanji" in English. They are a supplementary set of characters that can be legally used in registered personal names in Japan, despite not being in that country's set of "commonly used characters" . As a rule, registered personal names may...
provided by the Japanese Minister of Justice. In addition, it contains OpenType
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior...
tables for JIS78, JIS83, JIS90 forms for legacy usages.
Meiryo supports following OpenType layout features for Cyrillic
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
, Greek
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...
, Han Ideographic
Han unification
Han unification is an effort by the authors of Unicode and the Universal Character Set to map multiple character sets of the so-called CJK languages into a single set of unified characters. Han characters are a common feature of written Chinese , Japanese , Korean , and—at least historically—other...
, Kana
Kana
Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...
, Latin
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
scripts: nalt, afrc, dnom, dlig, frac, fwid, hwid, hkna, ital, jp78, jp83, jp90, numr, qwid, ruby, sinf, zero, smcp, c2sc, liga, sups, twid, vkna, vrt2, vert, kern.
Meiryo also contains glyphs not normally accessible without font editor. These glyphs include circled 00, 51-100; negative circled 00, 21-100, a-z, A-Z, kana; (rounded) square-enclosed characters, negative (rounded) square-enclosed characters; 2x2 CJK words.
The italic version of Meiryo only provides italicized glyphs for the Latin alphabet as written Japanese is traditionally not italicized.
Availability
For Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, Meiryo is distributed as two TrueType
TrueType
TrueType is an outline font standard originally developed by Apple Computer in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript...
Collection files, with regular and bold glyphs stored in separate files. Each file also contains an italic variant of the font.
As stated earlier, the font is included with the Windows Vista
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...
operating system.
For Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
, the font has become available free of charge by obtaining the Japanese version of Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Express Edition
Microsoft Visual C Sharp
Microsoft Visual C# is Microsoft's implementation of the C# specification, included in the Microsoft Visual Studio suite of products. It is based on the ECMA/ISO specification of the C# language, which Microsoft also created. While multiple implementations of the specification exist, Visual C# is...
and electing to install the Microsoft Silverlight runtime. Downloading and installing the Japanese ClearType fonts for Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
from Microsoft also makes Meiryo available on Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
.
Meiryo is also distributed with Japanese version of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac
Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac
Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is a version of the Microsoft Office productivity suite for Mac OS X. It supersedes Office 2004 for Mac and is the Mac OS X equivalent of Office 2007. Office 2008 was developed by Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit and released on January 15, 2008...
and Microsoft Office 2010 beta.
Authors
The Japanese characters of Meiryo were designed by C&G Inc. and Eiichi Kōno, who also redesigned the JohnstonJohnston (typeface)
Johnston is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by and named after Edward Johnston. It is well known for its use by Transport for London....
font which is now used by London Underground
London Underground
The London Underground is a rapid transit system serving a large part of Greater London and some parts of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex in England...
as New Johnston. The Latin characters were designed by Matthew Carter
Matthew Carter
Matthew Carter is a type designer. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Carter's career in type design has witnessed the transition from physical metal type to digital type...
, the British-born creator of the Verdana
Verdana
Verdana is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter for Microsoft Corporation, with hand-hinting done by Thomas Rickner, then at Monotype. Demand for such a typeface was recognized by Virginia Howlett of Microsoft's typography group...
font, and are visibly similar to characters from Verdana
Verdana
Verdana is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter for Microsoft Corporation, with hand-hinting done by Thomas Rickner, then at Monotype. Demand for such a typeface was recognized by Virginia Howlett of Microsoft's typography group...
. By having a font designed by a combination of Japanese and Latin font experts, Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
strived to create a font in which written English and Japanese could present themselves well together side-by-side on the screen. American Tom Rickner of Ascender Corporation
Ascender Corporation
Ascender Corporation is a digital typeface foundry and software development company located in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village, Illinois in the United States...
did extensive programming and font hinting for Meiryo. Rickner helped create the first TrueType
TrueType
TrueType is an outline font standard originally developed by Apple Computer in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript...
fonts at Apple and did all the font hinting for Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
’s Georgia and Verdana
Verdana
Verdana is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter for Microsoft Corporation, with hand-hinting done by Thomas Rickner, then at Monotype. Demand for such a typeface was recognized by Virginia Howlett of Microsoft's typography group...
fonts. According to Rickner, Meiryo is one of the first Japanese fonts created on and for the computer screen and took two years to create and engineer.
About the name
The font name comes from the Japanese word Meiryō (明瞭) meːɽjoː, which means "clarity", referring to ClearType making text written in Meiryo appear clearer on the screen. The Japanese spelling メイリオ is taken from the English pronunciation ˈmɛəri.oʊ; the actual Japanese spelling of 明瞭 in katakanaKatakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
is メイリョウ.
According to Eiichi Kōno, the name was chosen for its exotic-sounding pronunciation and its compactness.
Although it is a proportional font, the font name does not contain a 'P' to indicate this in Windows font lists as with ＭＳ Ｐゴシック and ＭＳ Ｐ明朝.
Problems
- At small sizes, dimensions of printed kanji characters are not even. However, small-size kanji rendering has been traditionally problematic involving trade-offs in legibility and other factors like spacing. That was fixed in Meiryo version 6 included with Windows 7.
- Sized between 11 and 13 points (96 dpi), glyphs have inconsistent stroke weight without the activation of ClearTypeClearTypeClearType is a trademark for Microsoft's implementation of subpixel rendering technology. ClearType attempts to improve the appearance of text on certain types of computer display screens by sacrificing color fidelity for additional intensity variation. This trade-off is asserted to work well on...
. Sometimes, especially on the Mac OS XMac OS XMac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
and Linux platforms, these problems can sometimes be avoided by displaying fonts in semi-bold or bold as their normal (lightest) font weight. T
- At small sizes, stroke reduction is not consistent with the methods used by other fonts such as MS Gothic.
- Because of its compliance with Japanese Industrial Standard for encoding JIS X 0213JIS X 0213JIS X 0213 is a Japanese Industrial Standard defining coded character sets for encoding the characters used in Japan. This standard extends JIS X 0208. The first version was published in 2000 and revised in 2004 . As well as adding a number of special characters, characters with diacritic marks,...
:2004, variant characters have different stroke layouts from the ones used in older MS Gothic and other conventional fonts. To use older characters in a web page, for example, Meiryo needs to be activated manually. (MingLiU and PMingLiU version 5.03 follow the standards set by Taiwan's Ministry of Education and the reference rendering used in UnicodeUnicodeUnicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
documents, which also causes similar dissatisfaction among users. On the other hand, MS Gothic, MS PGothic, MS UI Gothic, MS Mincho, MS PMincho can be updated to version 5.00, which include JIS X 0213JIS X 0213JIS X 0213 is a Japanese Industrial Standard defining coded character sets for encoding the characters used in Japan. This standard extends JIS X 0208. The first version was published in 2000 and revised in 2004 . As well as adding a number of special characters, characters with diacritic marks,...
:2004 support to match the characters used in Meiryo, and also incorporated JISJIS encodingIn computing, JIS encoding refers to several Japanese Industrial Standards for encoding the Japanese language. Strictly speaking, the term means either:* A set of standard character sets for Japanese, notably:...
90 Forms OpenTypeOpenTypeOpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior...
Layout Table for users preferring the old glyphs. For VistaWindows VistaWindows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...
users, Microsoft also offered an update to make MS Gothic and MS Mincho font families to use characters in JIS X 0208JIS X 0208JIS X 0208 is a 2-byte character set specified as a Japanese Industrial Standard, containing 6879 graphic characters suitable for writing text, place names, personal names, and so forth in the Japanese language. The official title of the current standard is...
-1990.)
- When italicized, only Latin characters are slanted, not CJK characters and kana. CJK characters use other methods of emphasis or quotation indication; thus differing from, for example, the typefaces of Romance languagesRomance languagesThe Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
(unrelated distinctions between cursive and non-cursive and other traditional writing styles do exist). Nowadays, however, italicization is used in advertising but usually combined with other, common forms of emphasis, such as bold weight, exclamation marks, and, in Japanese, katakanaKatakanais a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
use. Academic texts, for example, do not use italicized CJK characters as opposed to those in non-CJK languages, e.g. in traditionally Latin-1 encoded European languages that use italics for things like inline quotations. Since these traditions of italicization do not exist in CJK, the decisions made for Meiryo is based on the existing general use. According to Microsoft, Meiryo uses a customized version of VerdanaVerdanaVerdana is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter for Microsoft Corporation, with hand-hinting done by Thomas Rickner, then at Monotype. Demand for such a typeface was recognized by Virginia Howlett of Microsoft's typography group...
for italics instead of the generic slanting methodOblique typeOblique type is a form of type that slants slightly to the right, used in the same manner as italic type. Unlike italic type, however, it does not use different glyph shapes; it uses the same glyphs as roman type, except distorted...
. Although the font includes an OpenTypeOpenTypeOpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior...
table for italics, this feature only substitutes characters already included in the font, instead of applying transformation effects to the affected characters. Since Meiryo only has italic characters for Latin, Greek, CopticCoptic alphabetThe Coptic alphabet is the script used for writing the Coptic language. The repertoire of glyphs is based on the Greek alphabet augmented by letters borrowed from the Demotic and is the first alphabetic script used for the Egyptian language...
, and Cyrillic characters, it is an indication that Windows VistaWindows VistaWindows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...
does not use emulated italic effects if it uses a substitute font for italic effect but cannot find the correct glyph in the italic font. Similarly, most of the OpenTypeOpenTypeOpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior...
tables used in the font (except kern) only work if substitute glyphs are available inside the font.
- Characters for triple and quadruple dash box-drawing characters all have six dashes. Furthermore, all horizontal dash box-drawing characters have three dashes when using OpenTypeOpenTypeOpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior...
's half-width features.
Awards
Tokyo Type Directors club awarded 2007 Type design prize to Eiichi Kōno, C&G Inc (Satoru Akamoto, Takeharu Suzuki, Yukiko Ueda), and Matthew CarterMatthew Carter
Matthew Carter is a type designer. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Carter's career in type design has witnessed the transition from physical metal type to digital type...
for the Meiryo font.