MacOS – TextEdit Chinese Plain Text Style Problems

macostextedit

I'm working with Chinese text in TextEdit as a plain text .txt file.

This is what a normal line looks like: (and the style that my text document basically looks like)

none

?? bai1 bai1 [pai⁵⁵ pai⁵⁵] (名) 瘸子、跛子。

this is a weird one:

some

??儿端公——坐地使法 bai1 ber1 duan1 gong1——zo4 di4 si3 fa2 [pai⁵⁵ pər⁵⁵ tuan⁵⁵ koŋ⁵⁵ ——tso²¹³ ti²¹³ sɿ⁵³ fa²¹] (歇) ??儿即瘸子、跛子之类的人士。端公即男巫。??儿端公只好坐地使法。运用中指不亲自出面就在背后使用阴谋诡计。

I'm not sure why black text is suddenly looking kind of grey and thin – punctuation marks are likewise looking a little worse for the wear.

I think it may have something to do with the fact that I'm using a Unicode extension-B character (which may be using Hanazono font) giving everything behind it a weird look but I'm not sure. Also, this is plain text, I'm not really sure what could be interfering with it – but it's really starting to bug me. (it looks so nasty).

What can I do to fix my weird looking lines?

Best Answer

I have so far only found one font which has all the characters -- Babelstone Han. Try downloading that and switching the whole text to it.

Another possibility may be the MingLiu series of fonts that come with Word.

Of course plain text does not contain font info, so you are at the mercy of the the app and the OS regarding the fonts chosen, which will never be Babelstone Han unless this is installed and stipulated via rich text. In plain text I think you will always be stuck with two fonts which are unlikely to be identical in their display.

I notice, however, that your text above seems very even as displayed in my Safari. I wonder what font it is using.