Arphic Technology Co., Ltd. (, aka.: Arphic Technology (文鼎科技)) is a

type foundry A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Before digital typography, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces for hand typesetting, and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and ...

based in

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

(Republic of China), founded in May 1990.

Fonts

Arphic PL Fonts

Arphic Technology is the creator of the Arphic PL Fonts (where "PL" means "public license(d)", in Chinese: 文鼎公眾授權字型 or 文鼎自由字型), including AR PL

Kaiti The regular script is the newest of the major Chinese script styles, emerging during the Three Kingdoms period , and stylistically mature by the 7th century. It is the most common style used in modern text. In its traditional form it is the t ...

Big5 Big-5 or Big5 ( zh, t=大五碼) is a Chinese character encoding method used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau for traditional Chinese characters. The People's Republic of China (PRC), which uses simplified Chinese characters, uses the GB 18030 ...

(文鼎 PL 中楷), AR PL Mingti2L Big5 (文鼎 PL 細上海宋), AR PL SungtiL GB (文鼎 PL 簡報宋) and AR PL KaitiM GB (文鼎 PL 簡中楷), which were released in 1999 under the Arphic Public License. They are used by

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

-derived

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

s (such as

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

), as well as by most

LaTeX Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latices are found in nature, but synthetic latices are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a wikt:milky, milky fluid, which is present in 10% of all floweri ...

distributions, as part of their default CJK fonts. In 2010, Arphic Technology released another two fonts, AR PL MingU20-L (文鼎 PL 明體) and AR PL BaoSong2 GBK (文鼎 PL 報宋), which are available under a revised Arphic Public License that restricts distribution of the fonts to non-profit use only.

Meiryo

As a partner of C&G Inc., Arphic Technology was one of the designers of

kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...

in C&G's

Meiryo is a Japanese sans-serif gothic typeface. Microsoft bundled Meiryo with Office Mac 2008 as part of the standard install, and it replaces MS Gothic as the default system font on Japanese systems beginning with Windows Vista. Meiryo was create ...

(明瞭) font, intended for

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

Arphic Public License

The "Arphic Public License" published by Arphic Technology in 1999 was recognized by

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985. The organisation supports the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

as a

copyleft Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose, ...

, free

software license A software license is a legal instrument governing the use or redistribution of software. Since the 1970s, software copyright has been recognized in the United States. Despite the copyright being recognized, most companies prefer to sell lic ...

and incompatible with the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

. But as it is used almost only for fonts, the incompatibility does not cause a problem in that use. The revised Arphic Public License published in 2010 doesn't allow commercial use, thus is non-free.

References

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External links