Chinese Typesetting

The rules PodoLay follows when setting Simplified (mainland China) and Traditional (Taiwan, Hong Kong) Chinese text — fonts, punctuation position, kinsoku and mojikumi, quotation marks, 着重号, pinyin and zhuyin ruby, Chinese numerals, indexes and trim sizes.

Chinese fonts

Choose the text's language under Attributes tab › Character section › Language as Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese; the language of the whole layout is set in Layout Setup. If your account's country is China, new layouts start in Simplified Chinese; if it is Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macau, in Traditional Chinese.

The default font of a new Chinese layout is Noto Sans SC for Simplified and Noto Sans TC for Traditional (serif: Noto Serif SC/TC). The Korean font (Noto Sans KR) lacks about a third of the common Simplified characters and draws Han characters in Korean forms, so it does not suit Chinese text. Han characters missing from the text's font are drawn with a font that matches the text's language (SC for Simplified, TC for Traditional), and the PDF gets the same font.

Simplified fonts place punctuation in the lower left of the character cell, Traditional fonts in the centre. If you use a Simplified, Korean or Japanese font for Traditional text, or a Traditional font for Simplified text, the preflight check reports Font does not match Simplified/Traditional Chinese — punctuation position differs.

Kaiti and Fangsong are built in too: Kaiti is Podo WenKai (Podo WenKai; Podo WenKai TC for Traditional — LXGW WenKai renamed for PodoLay) and Fangsong is Zhuque Fangsong (Zhuque Fangsong). Zhuque Fangsong is still a preview release and lacks some rare characters; missing characters are drawn with Noto SC/TC. 楷体, 标楷体 and 仿宋 (including the _GB2312 versions) in Word manuscripts come in as these fonts.

In Chinese layouts the ▾ list of the font size field also shows 字号 (字號 in Traditional layouts): 初号 42 pt, 小初 36 pt, 一号 26 pt … 四号 14 pt, 小四 12 pt, 五号 10.5 pt, 小五 9 pt … 八号 5 pt.

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Kinsoku and mojikumi

The paragraph's Kinsoku set and Mojikumi default, Follow layout language, uses that language's rules in a Chinese layout.

• Kinsoku — Simplified layouts use the Simplified Chinese set, Traditional layouts the Traditional Chinese set. Marks such as 。，」 don't start a line, marks such as 「（ don't end one, and —— and …… are never split across their two cells.
• Mojikumi — Punctuation Full-Width (全角式 in CLREQ). Only consecutive marks are set half-width, and punctuation at the line end stays full-width. A quarter-em space goes between Han characters and Latin text.
• The centred marks in Traditional text (、。，：；！？) are not tightened against the neighbouring character. In Simplified text, ：；！？ are treated as marks placed on the left.

For 开明式, common in mainland books, choose Kaiming (开明式) under Mojikumi — only the full stop, question mark and exclamation mark are full-width; other marks such as commas and brackets are half-width. Older Chinese layouts that never chose a mojikumi setting are now set with full-width punctuation (全角式) as of this version, so their line breaks may change.

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Quotation marks and 破折号

With typographer's quotes turned on in Layout Setup, the " key gives 「 」 (nested 『 』) in Traditional text, “ ” in horizontal Simplified text and 「 」 in vertical Simplified text. The ' key gives 『 』 in Traditional text.

Typing -- in Chinese text gives the 破折号 —— (a two-cell dash). Press ⌘Z (Windows: Ctrl+Z) once to get back what you typed.

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• How do I use Taiwan-style quotation marks 「」?
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着重号·专名号·书名号

Emphasis marks in Chinese text (着重号) go below the character in horizontal text and to the right in vertical text unless a position is set. Select the characters, choose a mark (usually Dot •) under Character section › Emphasis marks, and click Over in the settings row to put them above. The character style's emphasis-mark position Follow Language follows the same rule.

New Chinese layouts include the character styles 专名号 (straight underline) and 书名号 (wavy underline) (專名號 and 書名號 in Traditional). Select a proper noun or book title and apply the style: the line is drawn below the characters in horizontal text and to the left in vertical text.

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Pinyin and zhuyin ruby

Select the characters and choose right-click › Ruby…. In Chinese text the initial setting is Mono ruby with centre alignment (pinyin) for Simplified, and Bopomofo (注音) for Traditional.

A new ruby is filled in from a dictionary when the dialog opens — pinyin with tone marks, zhuyin with tones and the neutral tone. For characters with several readings (polyphones), click one in the Polyphones row; changing the kind or clicking Fill pinyin or Fill zhuyin fills it again (your polyphone choices are kept). The dictionary follows mainland Putonghua, so correct words that are read differently in Taiwan (e.g. 頭髮).

• Pinyin — separate each character's syllable with spaces and include the tone marks (e.g. 中国 → zhōng guó).
• Zhuyin — write one syllable per character separated by spaces, with the tone (ˊ ˇ ˋ) at the end of the syllable, including the neutral tone (˙) (e.g. 中國 → ㄓㄨㄥ ㄍㄨㄛˊ). In horizontal text the symbols stack vertically to the right of the character with the tone to their right, and the character's width grows by that much. In vertical text they sit to the right of the character without widening the line spacing. The default size is 35% of the body text.

If the number of syllables differs from the number of characters, the reading is set in one line above, like group ruby. Zhuyin ruby goes into the PDF in the same position; in EPUB it appears beside the characters if the reading app supports it, otherwise above them.

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Simplified ↔ Traditional conversion

You can convert a Simplified manuscript to Traditional and vice versa. While editing text, right-click › Simplified/Traditional Conversion…; when you are not editing text, right-click an empty area (the item appears when the layout language or the language of the selected text is Chinese).

• Convert to — Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese (Taiwan) or Traditional Chinese (Hong Kong). Characters are chosen from word context, e.g. 头发→頭髮 but 发展→發展.
• Range — Selected text, Entire story (including threaded frames) or Entire layout (body text, table cells and footnotes; hidden or locked objects are skipped).
• Vocabulary — when on, Taiwanese vocabulary is converted too, e.g. 软件 ↔ 軟體, 内存 ↔ 記憶體 (not available for Hong Kong).
• Quotes — “”‘’ ↔ 「」『』 next to Chinese text are converted as well. Quotes and apostrophes in English text stay, and 「」 in vertical Simplified text is kept.

Only Chinese characters change; formatting, ruby and warichu stay. Markers such as page numbers and characters with an ideographic variation selector are left alone. One undo reverts it. Fonts and the layout language do not change: to match punctuation positions too, change the layout language in Layout Setup and the fonts (e.g. Noto Sans SC → Noto Sans TC) separately.

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Chinese numerals, indexes and trim sizes

The numbering styles for page numbers, footnotes and endnotes include Chinese numerals (一, 二, 三…). For page numbers, choose it under Numbering & Section Options › Style.

Paragraph list numbering also comes in the 一、二、三、 and （一）（二）（三） forms. Put the cursor in the paragraph and pick the form from the numbering button (Numbering) in the Attributes tab › Paragraph section (picking the current form again turns it off), or choose Chinese numbering 一、 or Chinese numbering （一） under List marker in the paragraph style. Each form counts on its own, and a higher level (一、) restarts the levels below it (（一） and 1.). Chinese numbers sit after the first-line indent with the text right after them; the following lines don't keep the number's space. In vertical text the number characters stand upright like the body. 一、 and （一） lists in Word manuscripts come in as these numbers. There is also the （1）（2）（3） form — Arabic numerals in full-width parentheses — so the levels of Chinese official layouts, 一、 → （一） → 1. → （1）, can be set as they are (Numbering （1） in the paragraph style).

Indexes in Simplified layouts are sorted in pinyin order and grouped by pinyin initial (A–Z); in Traditional layouts they are sorted by stroke count and grouped by stroke count (一畫, 二畫…).

The web portal's new-layout window and the cover calculator include Taiwanese trim sizes (25開 = A5, 18開, 32開, 16開) and Chinese trim sizes (32开, 大32开, 16开, 大16开). If your account's country is Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macau, the Taiwanese sizes come first in the list; if it is China, the Chinese sizes.

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