Research of Styles and Visualisation Characteristics on Chinese Engraved Ancient Book Typeface Culture

摘要

This research mainly conducted a study on the point size for Ming Dynasty Wangli Reign engraved books of China. This is a research focused on the subject of typeface point size. A study on editing elements among different typefaces in Chinese ancient engraved books was conducted in order to clarify if there was a specific rule on point sizes used. We also tried to understand if there was any absolute connection between point size and the size of version. This research investigated 217 Ming Dynasty Wangli Reign engraved books collected by the National Central Library of Taiwan. We have derived point size rules applied to various editing items and the popular forms in the time of specific engraved versions from these engraved books. We than analyzed and integrated overall factors that had constituted point sizes on engraved books. The result indicated that there were no limits on point size when it comes to application of typeface. However, there were certain connections existed between the width of columns and point size on these ancient books. The following characteristics were observed when we explored Ming Dynasty Wangli Reign typeface size: 1. For point sizes on the Ming Dynasty Wangli Reign version, most of them are distributed in the segment from size 38 to size 50. The number for size 44 ranks as the highest. 2. The largest size is 56 while the smallest is 20. Size 56 accounts for the biggest number of sizes. 3. For point sizes on volume names, most of them are in the segment from size 38 to size 50. With this, we came to the conclusion that point sizes for Ming Dynasty Wangli Reign version engraved ancient book poses special characteristics on Cultural Heritage Knowledge Visualisation.