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I have created a Flash banner to be used on a site that is localised across Asia-Pacific region, and according to provided brand guidelines I need to use Trebuchet as the base font and theres 3 different fonts specified for Traditional and Simplified Chinese.

Given Trebuchet is web safe I dont feel there is a need to embed it within Flash so I can keep the file size down, however what to do with Chinese? Is there an equivalent web safe font that anyone knows of? I had a quick look at Yahoo China and they're using "SimSun" is this the best option?

Your thoughts appreciated!

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The inconvenience is that Microsoft's fonts for Traditional and Simplified Chinese overlap and have different metrics for the same characters. This fonts are different to those from Apple and those available on Unix. The entire situation is a bit of a mess as even with disparate fonts they are still incomplete.

The common fonts are:

  • Traditional Chinese: Microsoft MingLiU ( 新細明體 ) translates as Arial
  • Simplified Chinese: SimSun or NSimSun ( 中易宋体 & 新宋体 ), SimHei ( 中易黑体 ) translates as Arial, New Tahoma (also New Times Roman), and bold New Times Roman.
  • Japanese: MS Mincho or MS PMincho ( MS 明朝 ), MS Gothic ( MS ゴシック ), Mincho is the Japanese variant of Ming with "P" prefix for proportional widths, Gothic is popular for UI screen usage.
  • Korean: Batang ( 바탕 ), Gulim ( 굴림 )
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  • Thanks for the info Steve-o, do think this would be a suitable font stack "SimSun, NSimSun, SimHei, Arial" to put on the font tag in FLash?
    – htmlr
    Aug 24, 2011 at 3:39
  • @htmlr just go with "SimSun, Arial" or "中易宋体, Arial". The three fonts always exist they just offer different styles.
    – Steve-o
    Aug 24, 2011 at 3:43
  • Ok will do - I've got a new issue now ive set the textbox to "use device fonts" as I dont want to embed and the text isnt coming up - it works only if I embed. Any ideas? myTxt.htmlText = "<font face="Trebuchet MS,Arial">Hello World</font>
    – htmlr
    Aug 24, 2011 at 4:59

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