Production First Software Encyclopedia of Typography and Electronic Communication : K

K or k Used to quantify computer data storage as an abbreviation for 1024.

Kalmukian A script related to Mongolian.

kana (Japanese) The general term used to refer collectively to hiragana and katakana.

(another definition follows)

Kana A typeface structural style for Kana character collections having thick vertical strokes, thin horizontal strokes, a wedge-shaped serif on the right end of strokes, and a taper on the left end of strokes. Named after the Japanese priest-painter Mincho who painted using bold brush strokes, a Chinese influence. Three sub-categories have been defined:
:Old Style - Strokes having smooth curves, relatively compact counters, and some variation of horizontal glyph widths. A typeface example is Midashi Kana 1.
:New Style - Sharper stroke edges, larger counters, and almost even-width glyphs. A typeface example is Kamono Kana Series U.

Kanbun Marks used to indicate reading order of Chinese texts in Japanese.

kanji Ideographs originating from Chinese used to represent Japanese words. About 30% of the characters used in Japanese are kanji. The remaining are hiragana, katakana, and Roman.

There are approximately 77,000 documented Han ideographs (the generalized international term used for kanji). At least the basic 881 kanji are taught to children in Japanese primary (elementary) school education. After World War II, a basic set of 1,850 kanji, known as the Toyo Kanji (« Kanji for Practical Use ») was organized and promoted in 1946 by the Japanese government, to encourage literacy. Newspapers and popular magazines usually limit the kanji used to this basic set. Additional simplifications were introduced in the form of simplified ideograph (fewer strokes) for ease in writing and recognition. Many Japanese, however, continue to use the older, more complex ideographs.

Approximately 7,000 to 9,000 Han ideographs are useful for general written communication and commerce. Many different character collections (some of which contain upwards of more than 13,000 Han ideographs) have been developed by such companies as Fujitsu, IBM, and Xerox, as well as the American, Chinese, Hong Kong, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese governmental standards bodies in order to cover the requirements of communication and commerce.

ISO 10646 and Unicode cover approximately 21,000 Han ideographs in the Basic Multilingual Plane (of ISO 10646) and an additional 17,000 Han ideographs placed in higher planes, as of 1997.

katakana A syllable-based collection of phonetic elements usually used to write foreign words in Japanese. The term derives from the Japanese word for a type of sword, presumably because the strokes comprising katakana letters in traditional Japanese typefaces resemble those swords. About 10% of the characters used in Japanese typically are katakana. The remaining are hiragana, kanji and Roman.

kashida A conjoin glyph extensively used in Arabic typography. Kashida conjoins are usually automatically inserted by software as text is rendered. The problem with implementing kashidas (and conjoins) in this manner is that the glyphs are merely overlapped slightly. If an application is used to outline or texture conjoined characters, this cannot be done properly because the conjoined outlines are not continuous.

KDE An abbreviation for K Desktop Environment, a graphical user interface designed for Linux.

Kerberos authentification feature An industry standard for identifying users and logging them into protected servers. It is named after Kerberos, a mythological three-headed dog.

kern The portions of a glyph which extend outside of its effective origin (on one side) and its effective character width on the opposite side. Conceivably, for letterforms or ideographs in some scripts, this could occur on four sides. Creating a mortice on a body results in a kern.

kerning The adjustment of space between individual characters on a page by means of several different methodologies. See blind kerning, pair kerning, and track kerning. Pair kerning and track kerning can be applied consecutively.

Originally, the term « kerning » referred to the production (in hot type) of letterform bodies having kerns so as to have proper letterfit.

keyboard map A list of font character and keyboard character location pairs which serves to define what font character is assigned to a certain keyboard character location. It is accessed by keyboard character location.

keyline A surrogate graphic or whitespace block temporarily placed in a layout.

Khutsuri Another name for the ecclesiastical alphabet of Georgian. Khutsuri uses both UPPERCASE and lowercase glyphs. Most Production First Software fonts have at least the UPPERCASE letterforms, but a few have both.

kilobyte A unit of data storage equal to 1.024 × 10³ bytes, abbreviated « K » or « KB » or « Kbyte. »

Kinsoku-shori A line-break rule used in Japanese which requires that certain characters (usually at least the Japanese comma, parenthesis, and period) not be at the beginning or end of a line.

knockout Parts of a process color image blocking parts of another process color image when superimposed. The alternative is an overprint.

knot See node.

Knuth, Donald Stanford University Professor of Computer Science who developed the T_EXTechnical and mathematical typesetting program and system. Knuth was also an early developer and proponent of composite fonts and Unicode.

kokuji Japanese kanji ideographs.

koteri The IME included with Macintosh KanjiTalk 7.x.

KQML An abbreviation for Knowledge Query Manipulation Language, used for designing interagent interaction protocalls.

kumimoji Fullwidth katakana set as inline annotation.

KUTEN Japanese acronym for « row and cell. » An IME architecture using multiple frames (each composed of a fixed number of rows and columns) to access Japanese JIS character sets using 2-byte character architecture. The « row » represents the first byte and the « cell » represents the second byte.

Kyokasho See Soft Brush :Kyokasho.

K0 kerning The lowest level of pair kern data, as described under Production First Software kern data classes. This class usually employs data only to represent functional requirements, such as combining marks or representation of fractions, not to improve type color aesthetics.

K1 kerning The basic level of pair kern data, as described under Production First Software kern data classes. This class includes pairs which are almost always necessary in most typefaces, such as AT, AV, LT, VA, Fa, Ty, etc.

K2 kerning A more enhanced level of pair kern data, as described under Production First Software kern data classes. This class optimizes type color between many, but not all, pairs, including pairs having accented letterforms, to the extent of the precision inherent in the use of the design.

K3 kerning An extremely enhanced level of kerning described under Production First Software kern data classes which optimizes type color in a specific, arbitrary way, with kerning between all pairs. Several varietals of K3 are offered, each optimizing a different aspect, such as relaxed or tight titling, relaxed or tight text, or customer custom specifications.

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