火 huǒ writing inconsistency

Bugs
1

I have noticed that the writing prompt for 火 and the KaiTi character displayed above it are different: the left dot is written in different directions. Then I also noticed that the tone prompt shows it also differently (I guess it’t just a huge version of that KaiTi character):

Screenshot_2017-02-26-04-32-27-333_com.inkren.skritter.chinese.png1080×1920 242 KB
Screenshot_2017-03-01-15-15-04-244_com.inkren.skritter.chinese.png1080×1920 218 KB

I started searching for the “right” way of writing it, but discovered that varies throughout all fonts and styles. Here is Pleco with KaiTi and SongTi:

Screenshot_2017-03-02-15-41-58-142_com.pleco.chinesesystem.png1080×1920 63.6 KB
Screenshot_2017-03-02-15-42-03-622_com.pleco.chinesesystem.png1080×1920 64.6 KB

And here is the stroke order from the wikipedia and wikitionary:

But even on those pages it varies, because in most HeiTi fonts the left dot stroke goes to the left (I’m not sure how this type of stroke is called correctly). But even among HeiTi-style fonts it varies. Some more links:

It’s also curious that the old scripts have these stokes symmetrical and in the Seal script they are “vertically oriented”.

Anyway, the bottom line is that whichever way is correct (or even if both ways are), I want it to be consistent in Skritter: either way, but the same throughout the app.

It’s okay if it will be different between KaiTi and HeiTi (that appears in the character info using the system font), but it should be the same at least in all KaiTi-looking appearances, i.e. including the writing prompt.

2

I think this might be a debate of how something is typically written by hand versus how something typically shows up printed in font. I think this is only great, because you learn both how something is typically written by hand, and printed in a font. A good example of this (for Japanese) is the character 北, where the font version is not how you would write it by hand, but doesn’t change that’s how you see it printed in a font.

スクリーンショット 2017-03-02 16.25.21.png1118×1078 214 KB

I agree tone prompts and writing prompts should match in character style, I’ve opened an issue!

1 Like
3

I agree tone prompts and writing prompts should match in character style, I’ve opened an issue!

Great! :thumbsup:

I think this is only great, because you learn both how something is typically written by hand, and printed in a font.

This reminds me again about KaiTi & HeiTi topic.

Also your example reminds me about this article on Hacking Chinese: Handwriting Chinese characters: The minimum requirements. I was quite surprised about differences with printed versions (even in KaiTi) and some unexpected “rules”. I guess, there’s something similar in Japanese.