Font Geeking: Same unicode different fonts 「啟」

I noticed that two variants of the character 「啟」 are assigned to the same unicode, so whichever appears just depends on the font you use.  qi3

The characters in Taiwan’s Zhuyin and Cangjie entry system show up as 啟, as shown at the top of the diagram above, but the character that comes out depends on the font embedded on the website. Taiwan’s ministry of education dictionary, for example, uses single in its entries and in the font it uses on its website. This seems to be the basic or standard form of the character in unicode, as the second two images indicate (word press visual appearance vs code).

Different examples and the fonts used to create them are shown below:

qi8

Found the 啟 version in 《哭泣哭泣城》 by 阮慶岳, as below:

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4 thoughts on “Font Geeking: Same unicode different fonts 「啟」

  1. How bizarre. I composed a response to this post under the assumption that you were looking at 新旧字形 and the distinction between the two forms of the 户/戶 element, since that’s the most noticeable difference between the characters displayed in my browser and the image versions. Instead it’s actually 啓 vs 啟 (which do seem to have distinct Unicode points). Relying on browser rendering seems pretty useless for this kind of discussion — in your lead-in to the final image, I see a horizontally-composed 啟 with a new form 户 element, but it’s a vertical-composed 啓 with an old-form 戶 element that’s circled in the image.

    • Hey jdmartinsen,
      Thanks for the enlightening comment. I was interested in the relative position of the character components as it relates to cangjie input, ie 竹口人大 (or 戈口人大) vs 竹大口 (or 戈大口), although your point is equally valid from this perspective. Forgive me my ignorance, but I don’t really understand your comment on unicode points. Both versions in the post seem to relate back to the following unicode: u555f – is there a way to specify different versions of the character, including the two you mentioned? Or am I confusing the issue? Would love it if you could share your knowledge on this, Conor

      • Also – hey – just realized my work computer is Windows XP and my home computer is Windows 7, so here I can type both 啟 啓 in cangjie and zhuyin, but in earlier versions they are both mapped to the same unicode. Haha – so I guess my post is more historical than current lol. Your point still stands about 戶 vs 户 though.

        • That’s interesting. I wonder it the earlier decision was made for standards reasons, or if it was a matter of the availability of the character variants in popular fonts of that time.

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