Discussion: serif fonts support?

[AC19970]

Currently, all bundled fonts are sans-serif fonts, and they are primarily designed for Latin text. Characters outside their coverage (such as CJK scripts) fall back to the system font, which is also typically sans-serif on most platforms.

As a result, users effectively only have sans-serif options available, regardless of whether they are reading English, Chinese, Japanese, or Korean lyrics.

I think this is worth discussing because lyric display is fundamentally a reading experience rather than a typical UI element. While sans-serif fonts work well for interfaces, serif fonts remain an important alternative for long-form reading and text-focused applications.

This applies not only to CJK users, but also to English-speaking users. I personally use the application extensively for English lyrics as well, and I feel that the current font selection lacks a serif counterpart to the existing sans-serif options.

For CJK languages, a serif option may be particularly valuable because Ming/Mincho-style typography remains widely used for reading and publishing. One possible candidate would be Source Han Serif (distributed by Google as Noto Serif CJK).

Some reasons it seems like a good fit:

• Open-source license.
• Comprehensive Chinese, Japanese, and Korean coverage.
• Region-specific glyph variants (SC, TC, HC, JP, KR).
• Available as a Variable Font with multiple weights in a single file.
• Widely deployed through the Noto ecosystem and Android platforms.
• Consistent typography across Latin and CJK text.

I'm not necessarily proposing Source Han Serif as the only solution, but I would like to discuss whether the application should provide at least one serif font option alongside the existing sans-serif choices.

I'd be interested to hear what maintainers and other contributors think about adding serif font support and what implementation approach would make the most sense.

[AC19970]

One concern with Source Han Serif is its size. Bundling a complete CJK serif family may not be practical, especially when the font files can be larger than the application itself.

For that reason, I don't think this discussion necessarily implies bundling Source Han Serif directly.

On Android, the system should already include extensive Noto font resources, although availability and accessibility may vary by platform and implementation. In addition, many users who care about typography already have preferred fonts installed.

Another possible approach would be allowing users to load fonts from a user-specified directory or import font files directly. That would make it possible for users to use fonts such as Source Han Serif without increasing the application's package size.

Also, even if custom font loading were supported, I still think there is value in providing at least one bundled serif option for Latin text, since the current built-in selection appears to consist entirely of sans-serif fonts. This would benefit English lyric readers as well and would provide a serif alternative out of the box.