Various fonts in the Asian languages:

The English names (and when applicable the localized names)

TrueType fonts under Win32 support multiple names, stored as resources inside the font file. This name is then used to identify the font in code. That resource string, like all resources, is read according to the machine's language settings. As anyone who understands localization will realize, this is very bad since it means that the functionality is changing when the language does. The font should be made to either accept only one name worldwide, or all names worldwide.... not to accept a different name depending on the machine's locale.

Fortunately, very few languages have ever taken advantage of this "feature" of font files.

Unfortunately, most Asian fonts do take advantage of it. This table is provided to give you both the English name and the localized name -- the latter will work only on that specific locale, and the former will work on every locale but that specific one. Feel free to use this information in your own applications that need to use specific fonts for Asian data on different locales!

Thankfully, Windows 2000 and XP have fixed the problem to the point where they will accept either name. For prior versions of Windows, the only real solution is to try one font, then if that attempt fails to try the other. Thus, the list. :-)

Note: The question marks in the English list of fonts below is intentional. Due to what can only be considered awful design on the part of the font creators, these fonts were given Asian names for non-Asian locales (and such characters always become question marks).