[Tex/LaTex] How to make a stroke order diagram for Chinese characters

cjkfonts

I would like to make a simple document explaining how to write certain Chinese characters. The standard method, which is used in many textbooks, is to first show the complete character and then a series of simpler ones adding one stroke at a time. In order to accomplish this, I need to be able to typeset only certain strokes from a given character. There is an article on typesetting rare characters, whose technique could be adapted but it would take a lot of work. I wonder if there is a simpler way which avoids entering each stroke manually.

Best Answer

I can speak for Japanese only, but it might help you to find the right track for Chinese if there is a similar project.

I had a privilege to exchange several emails with Ulrich Apel (the AAAA and Wadoku projects) and Timothy Eyre (the creator and maintainer of the Kanji Stroke Order Font). They are both nice and helpful guys.

How the font with stroke orders works in this particular case? You simply download the font from http://www.nihilist.org.uk/ (look up for the first link from top on the webpage) and unpack it in your working directory (and eventually install it). Use it with xelatex or lualatex as any other font. I enclose an example and a preview of several kanjis.

Update: I've found this font in fonts-kanjistrokeorders package in the Ubuntu repository.

%! {xe|lua}latex mal-kanji.tex
\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\pagestyle{empty}\parindent=0pt
\usepackage{fontspec}
\begin{document}
\centering % Font is present in working directory...
\setmainfont[ExternalLocation]{KanjiStrokeOrders_v3.001.ttf}
Good day!\par おはようございます
\newpage
Fish!\par 魚
\end{document}

mwe, part 1

mwe, part 2

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[Tex/LaTex] How to insert three Chinese characters

My suggestion: include an image (in pdf format) that contain the three characters. Then you don't need to matter whether others have the proper fonts to compile the document.

Of course, you should prepare the image first. You can use:

% To produce a pdf image: "name.pdf"
% UTF-8 encoding
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\documentclass{standalone}
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白居易

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Then you can include the image (name.pdf) in your own article:

% You don't need any Chinese support here
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\begin{document}

blah blah blah \includegraphics{name.pdf} blah blah

\end{document}

Maybe you don't have a modern TeX distribution that support XeLaTeX or you don't have proper Chinses fonts for it. Then you can use the alternative document for the image:

% To produce a pdf image: "name.pdf"
% UTF-8 encoding
% Compile with PDFLaTeX
% Alternative method, if you don't have any proper Chinese TTF/OTF font installed
\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{CJK}
\begin{document}
\begin{CJK}{UTF8}{gbsn}
白居易
\end{CJK}
\end{document}

Best Answer

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