The US version of Windows XP includes the following Chinese fonts, available after you enable East Asian language support:

An asterisk (*) marks the Chinese fonts that will come up by default when you start typing. This can be changed in your Settings. "Proportional" vs. "monospaced" refers only to the Western characters and spaces included in these fonts.

Some Western fonts can also display pinyin with tone marks. For more information on those fonts, and an MS Word macro to make typing them quite easy, see the pinyin macro page

The Song font listed above is the standard Chinese printing typeface, named after the Song dynasty when it may have originated. Hei is the standard headline font, "dark"/"black" just like its name.

The names of these fonts are confusing because Microsoft bought the simplified and traditional fonts from two different vendors. "Xin"/"New" is proportional in one set but monospaced in the other. For most purposes you will want to use the default proportional Song fonts, SimSun and PMingLiU.

So what's missing?

• A replacement for the SimSun and NSimSun with more characters has been available since 2001. "SimSun 18030" conforms to the new PRC government standard, GB 18030. Microsoft cannot sell Windows in mainland China without it, but has not included this in any update for other countries. At the end of my survey of third-party fonts, and apps, there is more info about GB code, but all you really need to know is that you can simply download this font from Microsoft.


• You have the SimHei headline font with simplified Chinese Heiti characters and a limited set of traditional Chinese Heiti characters. There are not enough characters in this font to cover the larger range of a standard traditional character set.


• You are missing two standard Chinese fonts that are normally in a basic set: the Kai and Fangsong fonts, which you could say are roughly equivalent to ornate or italic styles. Often a basic set of traditional Chinese fonts include all of the above plus the Weibei and Yuan fonts as well.

These missing Chinese fonts are very common, and you should consider buying a third-party font package if you are doing more than casual e-mail and such.

Confused about "proportional" vs. "monospaced"? This refers only to the Western characters and Western spaces contained in each font, and does not affect the Chinese characters themselves.

Example of proportional English fonts you may be familiar with are Times and Arial. A monospaced, or non-proportional font, would be old versions of Courier, in which every letter takes up the same amount of space from side-to-side just like the output of a typewriter. (Too bad Dan Rather didn't read this paragraph...)