Chinese fonts with weight

[bmann]

Can anyone recommend an inexpensive or free Chinese text font with weight? Apparently the standard fonts for DTP software have only a medium weight - I need bold and stroking doesn't cut it because I have to outline them and dump into Quark which doesn't support stroke. Also I've tried using a Chinese font in Q7 but adding "bold" doesn't have much if any effect.

Need Simplified Chinese at least, both Simplified and Traditional would be ideal.

Thanks,
Ben

[ktinkel]

Can anyone recommend an inexpensive or free Chinese text font with weight?

Need Simplified Chinese at least, both Simplified and Traditional would be ideal.I know from nothing about Asian fonts, unfortunately, but are you familiar with the ones that ship with Mac OS X? At least one has both light and regular weights (though I have no idea what sort it may be). I am attaching a sample of STHeiti Regular; there is also a Light.

If you do not work on a Mac maybe you could borrow or rent one for a month in order to use the fonts.

I was going to suggest Adobe as a source but I checked, and they seem to offer only Japanese fonts.

[iamback]

Can anyone recommend an inexpensive or free Chinese text font with weight? Apparently the standard fonts for DTP software have only a medium weight - I need bold and stroking doesn't cut it because I have to outline them and dump into Quark which doesn't support stroke. Also I've tried using a Chinese font in Q7 but adding "bold" doesn't have much if any effect.I suspect that Chinese fonts don't really do "weights". Think of painting the characters with a brush: making "heavier" characters requires a different technique (though not necessarily a thicker brush!) and can change the shape of the strokes considerably. Especially in those kinds of fonts that actually still resemble having been painted. But even for "modern" more geometric character shapes I have never seen weight variations in Chinese printed material - only different fonts.

Rather than searching for weights, I think you may just need to search for different fonts.

[iamback]

The Chinese fonts I have all seem to have come from Microsoft. There are some .ttc files which the MS extended properties util doesn't recognize, but the .ttf fonts all seem to have come from "ZHONGYI Electronic Co., Beijing".

A little googling brings me then to this site: ZhongYi High Quality Fonts (http://www.china-e.com.cn/en/fonts/Font-Main.htm) which may help.

[bmann]

Thanks, somehow I overlooked that one. I ended up using it even though the difference between 'Light' and 'Regular' is hardly noticeable. It's all I've got.

[bmann]

I think you're right about the thickness in general. However, the Linotype website has quite a few with up to five different weights but $500 a font is a bit ridiculous.