Unify the difference between JP-designed radicals and CN-designed radicals

[Marcus98T]

I think while this may be far-fetched and not so obvious, we should unify the look of the Chinese radicals to the JP-designed ones (for example, 石, 木) for all Chinese characters, with the exception of those that are deemed necessary to differentiate for regional standards (e.g. 言, 糸).

This applies especially to CN-designed glyphs by Changzhou Sinotype, which for some reason changed the shape of the radicals slightly even when there is no need to. Consequently the TW and HK glyphs (designed by Arphic) also followed that of the CN-designed radicals.

The examples I have given are not exhaustive. There can be other radicals for which it can be made to look more consistent.

This issue also applies to Serif.

[Marcus98T]

A few more examples: the curves of the 心 radicals (both left radical and bottom component) and the left 水 radicals. It appears the CN-designed radicals made the strokes a bit more stiff and less curvy because they think the stiffness should be handwriting-standards compliant. I think it just ruins the aesthetic.

Yes, we have a problem with the spacing between the components of the CN glyph of 湾 (U+6E7E), but I'm demonstrating how different the radical is compared to the JP glyph.

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EDIT: For 悟 (U+609F), see here. I moved it for organizational purposes.

[Marcus98T]

A small comment: Recently, after a bit of research, I think at this point, Adobe and Google are aware of this issue and are not ignoring it.

So I think as part of a long term plan for the next major version of Source Han/Noto Sans and Serif CJK, they are planning a redesign of the font series, done with fontra (a web based font editor currently in development). Right now it's only a small test with 1000 Chinese characters. The readme states that Variable Components are front and centre of this design process (and I quote part of it below (with appropriate words in bold italics) as it is relevant to this issue), so hopefully the experiment works and it can be expanded to remaster the entire font series in the future. It doesn't mean though that the font series will be entirely redone in fontra, as plans can change.

The goal is to remaster the Noto CJK fonts truthfully to the original typeface design, but not to match 100%. In addition, designing with Variable Components may level up the overall glyph consistency throughout the typeface. The images below illustrate to fact that we do not try to match pixel perfect the original, it is a remastering of the typeface that is true to the original design while being more consistent over all radicals usage.

https://github.com/notofonts/noto-cjk-varco/blob/main/README.md

The repository is in active development as of this writing.