Adding more weights of Noto Sans CJK into Android system

[fatloong]

Dear sir or madam,

As we know, Google started to use Noto Sans CJK (Source Han Sans) as default font of Chinese, Korean and Japanese from Android 5.0. Although Noto Sans CJK has seven weights, Google only integrate one weight - the Regular weight into Android system. Even in Android 7.0, it still contains one weight of Noto Sans CJK and not add other weights. Therefore, the typeface of CJK looks not perfect enough.

Related code of /system/etc/fonts.xml from Android 7.0:

<family lang="zh-Hans">
<font weight="400" style="normal" index="2">NotoSansCJK-Regular.ttc</font>
</family>
<family lang="zh-Hant">
<font weight="400" style="normal" index="3">NotoSansCJK-Regular.ttc</font>
</family>
<family lang="ja">
<font weight="400" style="normal" index="0">NotoSansCJK-Regular.ttc</font>
</family>
<family lang="ko">
<font weight="400" style="normal" index="1">NotoSansCJK-Regular.ttc</font>

Some people rooted their device and added other weights of Noto Sans CJK result in different appearance of typeface. Following are some screen shots:

Left: Only Regular originally, Right: Adding Medium and Light

Left: Regular with fake Bold originally, Right: Adding Bold

As you can see many strokes of fake Bold stick together and the edge of fake Bold character is blurry.

Picture from https://www.zhihu.com/question/25529554/answer/94207134

Others also reported this issue on Android Open Source Project - Issue Tracker, they have more professional description than me, please refer: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=213825#c3 and https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=188772

I am not sure whether you can fix this issue or report to your related department. I hope Google fully make use of seven weights of Noto Sans CJK , so Noto Sans CJK will have better typeface and experience for Chinese, Korean and Japanese users.

Best regards

Jack

[bebio...@gmail.com]

I, too have the same complaint as Jack. I'm in China and trying to design a visually-appealing website that can have high-quality fonts. Our website pages must contain texts that mix together words and phrases in English (and occasionally other European languages), Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Japanese at once. It is a visual nightmare to have different fonts for each language, which when mixed together in the same text make for a very ugly page. The Noto family is literally a dream come true, except that the Chinese font for a single weight is about 20MB (making local hosting impractical), and googlefonts.api is blocked in China (and there is currently no valid alternative or mirror within mainland China).

Since we want our page to be read primarily in smartphones, I am happy that at least the Noto CJK Regular is at least installed in Android, but I desperately urge you to at least include the remaining weights if future Android updates, as it would make the lives of so many web designers so much more practical.

I wish you a nice day, and hope you can address this request as soon as possible.