Why should the official documents use the font of "Imitation Song_GB2312"?

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ID: yxt2114

First of all, official documents can but not necessarily use the font of “Imitation Song_GB2312”. ¹

Some people say that the official document should use "Fang Song_GB2312" because of the country's regulations; others say that although it is only stipulated to use Fang Song typeface now, the previous standard required the use of "Fang Song_GB2312". These claims are false.

The current national standard "Format of Official Documents of Party and Government Organs" (GB/T 9704—2012) only states: "Unless otherwise specified, all elements of the official document format generally use No. Use No. 3 imitation Song style characters..." The previous "Format of Official Documents of State Administrative Organs" (GB/T 9704-1999) and "Format of Official Documents of State Organs" (GB/T 9704-1988) also only mentioned imitation Song style, while in 1951 Since then, all the official document processing regulations (measures) at the central level²do not even directly stipulate the font.

It can be seen that the national standard of official document format only requires the use of Fangsong typeface, but does not specify which type of Fangsong typeface to use. "Fake Song _GB2312" as a kind of Song Song font certainly complies with the standard, but it is not the only choice.

What needs to be explained is that there is a widely circulated view that the "Fake Song_GB2312" font is the national standard, so it should be used for official documents instead of other Fake Song fonts. This is also wrong.

"GB2312" in the font name of "Fangsong_GB2312" refers to a national computer character encoding standard, which means that "Fangsong_GB2312" supports (and only supports) this encoding standard, but does not mean It is a national standard in itself.

"GB2312" refers to "Basic Set of Chinese Character Coded Character Set for Information Interchange" (GB/T 2312—1980, originally mandatory³ ), which is a set of Simplified Chinese codes implemented in 1981, which only contains 6763 Chinese characters (and 682 other characters). Since then, "Chinese Character Internal Code Extension Specification" (GBK, including 21,003 Chinese characters), "Expansion of the Basic Set of Chinese Character Coded Character Sets for Information Technology Information Interchange" (GB 18030-2000, including 27,533 Chinese characters) and "Information Technology Chinese Coding "Character Set" (GB 18030-2005, including 70,244 Chinese characters) is backward compatible with GB/T 2312. In other words, the Chinese fonts we use now basically conform to GB/T 2312. From this point of view, "Imitation Song_GB2312" is nothing special.

However, "Fake Song_GB2312", designed by the Great Wall Computer Corporation of China, is a pre-installed font on the Windows XP operating system and some earlier versions of Windows. At the time when the electronic office of party and government organizations just started, most of the computers were Windows XP systems. Considering the simplicity and versatility of the "Fake Song Style" required for official documents, "Fake Song_GB2312" was almost the only option, and thus became the common official font at that time.

Later, from the next generation system (Vista), Windows gave up the "imitation song_GB2312" (no longer pre-installed, but can still be installed manually), and switched to the " Imitation of Song Dynasty". Zhongyi "Fang Song" supports GB 18030 character set, and can display much more Chinese characters than "Fang Song_GB2312", and the font shape has also been optimized. However, Due to various reasons, the outdated "Fake Song_GB2312" is still widely used in official documents until today. These reasons include: using and reading "Fangsong_GB2312" has become a habit, and other fonts are not pleasing to the eye; in order to be compatible with computers that do not have new fonts, the old fonts continue to be used; I learned from predecessors and Kumon tutorials that "Fangsong_GB2312" should be used ", and even mistakenly thought that this was a national regulation; I don't know if there is anything wrong with changing to a new font, and whether it will be criticized, but it must be no problem to continue to use the old font; and so on.

But "Imitation Song_GB2312" is indeed outdated. Even if you don't talk about font problems, it only supports GB/T 2312, a set of encodings more than forty years ago, which means that it should have been eliminated ──at least gradually. Because the character set of GB/T 2312 is too small, "Fake Song_GB2312" not only cannot display rare characters and traditional characters, but also does not support some Chinese characters that are not too rare or even commonly used (usually replaced by "Microsoft Yahei" and other font display). For example: the Chinese character number "〇" used as a number (such as "2035"), "le" in "lookout", "pan" in "nirvana", "lao" in "long-winded", and commonly used in people's names The "rong", "yue", "zhe", "kun", "peng", "min", "chong" and so on.

For Zhongyi "Fang Song" that supports GB 18030, displaying the above Chinese characters is not a problem at all. Moreover, with the popularization of the new pre-installed "Fang Song" system, documents using "Fang Song_GB2312" will instead be incorrectly displayed on computers that have not manually downloaded and installed the corresponding font. At present, some institutions do use Zhongyi's "imitation of Song Dynasty".

In addition to the above two imitation Song fonts pre-installed in Windows, Peking University Founder's "Founder imitation Song" series of fonts (including "Founder imitation Song simplified", "Founder imitation Song_GBK", "Founder imitation Song_GB18030) are often used in official documents. "" "Founder Official Document Imitation of Song Dynasty" and other fonts with the same or similar fonts). On the one hand, this is because Founder is one of the larger font brands in China; on the other hand, this is also affected by the localization of office offices to a certain extent⁴. There is another important and possibly more fundamental reason: Official documents officially issued by many agencies (especially higher-level ones) are typeset in the printing factory using the "Founder Book Version" software, and the "Founder Book Version" uses the Founder font⁵. At present, some agencies have explicitly required official documents to use square fonts.

Finally, briefly talk about which font is recommended for official documents. From the perspective of ordinary individuals, of course, you should follow the usage habits of your unit; if everyone is using "Fan Song_GB2312", then use "Fan Song_GB2312". ButFrom the point of view of the specification maker, "Fake Song_GB2312" should be abandoned; Progress; but considering the trend of localization of agencies and benchmarking against the practices of superiors, it may be a better choice to use "Founder Fangsong" (usually "Founder Fangsong_GBK") in one step.

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