ISAS Song

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A GB2312 Song bitmap font made in 1988 by the Institute of Software, Academia Sinica (Chinese Academy of Sciences), in 16px and 24px, covering every hanzi and symbol in GB2312. The institute released it under a permissive license in the X11/HPND/MIT family, and it is included in many Linux distributions.

Variant size table

Variants	Nominal size	Han ink box	Max ink extents
gb16st	16 px	15×16	16×16
gb24st	24 px	22×24	24×24

Variants

Presets

All variants Grid No wrap

Copy dot matrix

Compare with others →

Metrics

Nominal size	16 px
Han ink box	15×16
Max ink extents	16×16
Ascent / Descent	14 / 2
Font bounding box	16, 16, 0, -2
Spacing	Monospaced
Advance width distribution	16px×7445

Nominal box 16×16 Han ink (median) 15×16 Max ink 16×16

Nominal size	24 px
Han ink box	22×24
Max ink extents	24×24
Ascent / Descent	22 / 2
Font bounding box	24, 24, 0, -2
Spacing	Monospaced
Advance width distribution	24px×7445

Nominal box 24×24 Han ink (median) 22×24 Max ink 24×24

Character coverage

Variants

Overview

Encoded characters	7,445 / 297,264	2.50%
BMP	7,445 / 62,089	11.99%

General & international

International Ideographs Core (IICore)	5,784 / 9,810	58.96%
Unihan Core 2020	6,763 / 20,720	32.64%
Windows Glyph List 4	184 / 650	28.31%
Basic Latin	0 / 95	0.00%
Latin-1 Supplement	19 / 96	19.79%
Latin Extended-A	6 / 128	4.69%
Latin Extended-B	8 / 208	3.85%
Cyrillic Everyday Characters	66 / 97	68.04%
Greek Everyday Characters	48 / 72	66.67%
Arabic Everyday Characters	0 / 92	0.00%
Thai Everyday Characters	0 / 87	0.00%
Vietnamese Latin	11 / 186	5.91%
IBM Code Page 437	55 / 255	21.57%
Box Drawing	76 / 128	59.38%
Block Elements	0 / 32	0.00%
Powerline Symbols	0 / 41	0.00%
Braille Patterns	0 / 256	0.00%

CJK character map

CJK unified ideographs Unicode 17 6,763 / 101,996

Selected CJK, without duplicates 6,891 / 26,28126.2%

Taiwan · Common/Less-common Traditional Han4,276 / 11,151 38.3% Common 3,059 / 4,808

Mainland China · General Simplified Han6,638 / 8,105 81.9% Level 1 3,498 / 3,500

Japan · JIS X 0208 Level 11,880 / 2,965 63.4%

Korea · KS X 1001 unified Han2,684 / 4,620 58.1%

Traditional Han ∩ Simplified Han4,230 / 4,899

Hiragana & Katakana 170 / 171 99.4% Other kana 0 / 408

Hangul syllables 0 / 11,172 0% KS X 1001 syllables 0 / 2,350
Hangul Jamo, with extensions 0 / 451

Basic Bopomofo 37 / 37 100% Other Bopomofo 0 / 38

Schematic overlaps; areas are not proportional to character counts.

Explore the counts & definitions

The selected CJK total combines the four Han tables, the JIS hiragana and katakana with ー・, Hangul syllables and basic Bopomofo, counting each code point once. Jamo, compatibility Han, other kana and other Bopomofo are listed separately.

“Simp Trad Shared” counts Unicode code points shared by the Simplified and Traditional Han reference sets. Shared code points can still have different regional glyph shapes, for example through OpenType locl; coverage does not imply identical glyphs.

Unicode 17. Counts use exact code points, with no variant-form or compatibility normalization. The Han map includes the 12 unified ideographs in the compatibility block; other compatibility ideographs are listed separately. “Only” means absent from the other three reference sets.

Taiwan: the 4,808 common and 6,343 less-common character tables. Mainland China: the 8,105 standard characters in three levels. Japan: the 2,965 JIS X 0208 Level 1 kanji. Korea: the unified Han subset of KS X 1001. The small lines under Taiwan and Mainland China show the common table (4,808) and Level 1 (3,500), which the Traditional and Simplified Chinese labels are judged on. The kana figure is the 83 hiragana and 86 katakana of JIS X 0208 plus ー and ・; rare, historical, extended and halfwidth kana are listed as other kana. Basic Bopomofo is the 37 letters U+3105–3129; dialect letters and the extended block are listed as other Bopomofo.

Shared & unique characters
Shared & unique characters	Covered / total
Traditional Han ∩ Simplified Han	4,230 / 4,89986.3%
Japanese Kanji ∩ Traditional Han	1,754 / 2,49570.3%
Japanese Kanji ∩ Simplified Han	1,874 / 1,90498.4%
Korean Han ∩ Traditional Han	2,643 / 4,29461.6%
Korean Han ∩ Simplified Han	2,675 / 2,79995.6%
Traditional Han ∩ Simplified Han ∩ Japanese Kanji	1,748 / 1,77198.7%
Traditional Han ∩ Simplified Han ∩ Korean Han	2,634 / 2,73396.4%
Traditional Han ∩ Simplified Han ∩ Japanese Kanji ∩ Korean Han	1,684 / 1,69899.2%
Traditional Han ∪ Simplified Han	6,684 / 14,35746.6%
Traditional Han ∪ Simplified Han ∪ Japanese Kanji	6,684 / 14,69445.5%
Traditional Han ∪ Simplified Han ∪ Korean Han	6,684 / 14,61745.7%
Traditional Han ∪ Simplified Han ∪ Japanese Kanji ∪ Korean Han	6,684 / 14,90144.9%
Traditional Han only	36 / 4,6380.8%
Simplified Han only	2,260 / 3,02874.6%
Japanese Kanji only	0 / 2840%
Korean Han only	0 / 2070%

Reference tables: Unicode 17 · FontPixel

CJK character totals

CJK unified ideographs	6,763 / 101,996	6.63%
Selected CJK, without duplicates	6,891 / 26,281	26.22%

Simplified Chinese · National standards

GB/T 2312 Hanzi	6,763 / 6,763	100%	✓ Complete
GB/T 2312 Level 1 Hanzi	3,755 / 3,755	100%	✓ Complete
GB/T 2312 Level 2 Hanzi	3,008 / 3,008	100%	✓ Complete
GBK Hanzi	6,763 / 20,923	32.32%
GB/T 12345 Traditional Hanzi	4,685 / 6,866	68.23%
GB 18030-2022 Implementation Level 3	6,763 / 88,115	7.68%
GB 18030-2022 Implementation Level 2	6,763 / 27,780	24.34%
GB 18030-2022 Implementation Level 1	6,763 / 27,584	24.52%

Simplified Chinese · Language standards

Table of General Standard Chinese Characters	6,638 / 8,105	81.90%
General Standard Chinese Characters Level 1	3,498 / 3,500	99.94%
General Standard Chinese Characters Level 2	2,812 / 3,000	93.73%
General Standard Chinese Characters Level 3	328 / 1,605	20.44%
List of Frequently Used Characters in Modern Chinese	3,498 / 3,500	99.94%
Frequently Used Characters in Modern Chinese (2500)	2,500 / 2,500	100%	✓ Complete
Less Frequently Used Characters in Modern Chinese (1000)	998 / 1,000	99.80%
List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese	6,593 / 7,000	94.19%
Compulsory Education Chinese Character List	3,498 / 3,500	99.94%
Standard Glyph Forms for Ancient Book Printing	4,422 / 14,250	31.03%
Kangxi Radicals	0 / 214	0.00%
CJK Radicals Supplement	0 / 115	0.00%
Hanyi Simplified & Traditional Set	6,763 / 9,169	73.76%
FounderType Simplified & Traditional Set	6,763 / 9,664	69.98%

Traditional Chinese · Taiwan

Taiwan common and less-common Han (total)	4,276 / 11,151	38.35%
Standard Forms of Common National Characters	3,059 / 4,808	63.62%
Standard Forms of Less-Common National Characters	1,217 / 6,343	19.19%
Big5 All Hanzi	4,383 / 13,053	33.58%
Big5 Frequently Used Hanzi	3,328 / 5,401	61.62%
Big5 Less Frequently Used Hanzi	1,055 / 7,652	13.79%
Basic Bopomofo	37 / 37	100%	✓ Complete
Other Bopomofo	0 / 38	0.00%

Traditional Chinese · Hong Kong

List of Graphemes of Commonly-Used Chinese Characters	3,049 / 4,762	64.03%
Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set Hanzi	480 / 4,603	10.43%
Hong Kong Supplementary Characters in Common Use	177 / 1,102	16.06%

Japanese

JIS X 0208 Non-Kanji	479 / 524	91.41%
JIS X 0208 Level 1 Kanji	1,880 / 2,965	63.41%
JIS X 0208 Level 2 Kanji	1,450 / 3,390	42.77%
JIS X 0213 Level 3 Kanji	386 / 1,260	30.63%
JIS X 0213 Level 4 Kanji	418 / 2,397	17.44%
Joyo Kanji	1,391 / 2,136	65.12%
Kyoiku Kanji	692 / 1,026	67.45%
Jinmeiyo Kanji	443 / 864	51.27%
Hiragana & Katakana (JIS X 0208, with ー・)	170 / 171	99.42%
Hiragana	83 / 83	100%	✓ Complete
Katakana	86 / 86	100%	✓ Complete
Other kana	0 / 408	0.00%
Other Hiragana and Katakana block characters	0 / 18	0.00%
Kana extensions	0 / 327	0.00%
Halfwidth Katakana	0 / 63	0.00%
JIS X 0201	0 / 158	0.00%

Korean

Hangul Syllables (All Modern)	0 / 11,172	0.00%
KS X 1001 Hangul Syllables	0 / 2,350	0.00%
KS X 1001 Han (total)	2,684 / 4,888	54.91%
KS X 1001 unified Han	2,684 / 4,620	58.10%
KS X 1001 compatibility Han	0 / 268	0.00%
KS X 1001 Symbols	562 / 987	56.94%
Hangul Jamo, with extensions	0 / 451	0.00%
Hangul Compatibility Jamo	0 / 94	0.00%
Hangul Jamo · base block	0 / 256	0.00%
Hangul Jamo extensions A and B	0 / 101	0.00%

Unicode blocks(23)

Latin-1 Supplement	19 / 128	14.84%
Latin Extended-A	6 / 128	4.69%
Latin Extended-B	8 / 208	3.85%
Spacing Modifier Letters	2 / 80	2.50%
Greek and Coptic	48 / 134	35.82%
Cyrillic	66 / 256	25.78%
General Punctuation	11 / 111	9.91%
Letterlike Symbols	2 / 80	2.50%
Number Forms	12 / 60	20.00%
Arrows	4 / 112	3.57%
Mathematical Operators	29 / 256	11.33%
Miscellaneous Technical	1 / 256	0.39%
Enclosed Alphanumerics	50 / 160	31.25%
Box Drawing	76 / 128	59.38%
Geometric Shapes	9 / 96	9.38%
Miscellaneous Symbols	4 / 256	1.56%
CJK Symbols and Punctuation	20 / 64	31.25%
Hiragana	83 / 93	89.25%
Katakana	87 / 96	90.63%
Bopomofo	37 / 43	86.05%
Enclosed CJK Letters and Months	10 / 255	3.92%
CJK Unified Ideographs	6,763 / 20,992	32.22%
Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms	98 / 225	43.56%

Glyph overview

Use arrow keys to select a glyph, Enter to inspect it, and Escape to return to the grid.

Downloads

gb16st	BDF 253.5 KB PCF 259.3 KB
gb24st	BDF 398.9 KB PCF 387.2 KB
Full family BDF ZIP	isas-song.zip 670.7 KB
Bitmap TTF	isas-song.ttf 945.7 KB
Vector TTF (square)	isas-song-24px-square.ttf 2.25 MB
Vector TTF (round)	isas-song-24px-round.ttf 9.65 MB
Web font (square)	isas-song-24px-square.woff2 562.3 KB
Web font (round)	isas-song-24px-round.woff2 613.3 KB

Files are gzip-compressed; checksums are SHA-256.

One file with every size of this font packed in as bitmap strikes, no vector outlines. Install it and each size is there to use on any system that renders bitmap strikes.

Real outline fonts that draw every lit pixel as a square or a round dot, so they work at any point size. Square keeps the bitmap exactly as drawn; round is the same bitmap read in circles. Only the largest pixel size of each face is offered as a vector font, since outlines scale freely anyway. Faces with very large glyph counts get the square version only.

Use it on a web page

woff2 built from the vector outlines. Set a font size that is a whole multiple of the design size to keep the pixel grid crisp.

@font-face {
  font-family: "ISAS Song";
  src: url("https://fontpixel.com/downloads/isas-song-24px-square.woff2") format("woff2");
  font-display: fallback;
}
.pixel {
  font-family: "ISAS Song", monospace;
}

@font-face {
  font-family: "ISAS Song";
  src: url("https://fontpixel.com/downloads/isas-song-24px-round.woff2") format("woff2");
  font-display: fallback;
}
.pixel {
  font-family: "ISAS Song", monospace;
}

Author: Institute of Software, Academia Sinica
Homepage: xorg.freedesktop.org/archive/individual/font/font-isas-misc-1.0.4.tar.xz
Glyph count: 7,445
Category: Song / Mincho · Serif
Scripts: Simplified Chinese · Traditional Chinese (incomplete) · Japanese (incomplete) · Latin (Western European, incomplete) · Cyrillic (incomplete) · Greek (incomplete)
Vibes: Serif · Book typography
Source type: Bitmap source · BDF

License

ISAS (1988) ISAS License (1988, HPND-style)

Unofficial licence summary

These are plain-language summaries, not legal advice. The licence included with each font controls. A tick always means the more permissive answer.

Commercial use: Yes
Modify: Yes
Embed in documents: Yes
Embed in apps: Yes
No notice required: No or not required
No copyleft: Yes
No renaming required: Yes

Commercial use and resale are allowed. "Without fee" means the permission is granted without a license fee, not that copies must be free. Keep the notices, and do not use the institute's name to promote distribution without written permission.

View full text

Copyright (C) 1988  The Institute of Software, Academia Sinica.

Correspondence Address:  P.O.Box 8718, Beijing, China 100080.

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and
its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted,
provided that the above copyright notices appear in all copies and
that both those copyright notices and this permission notice appear
in supporting documentation, and that the name of "the Institute of
Software, Academia Sinica" not be used in advertising or publicity
pertaining to distribution of the software without specific, written
prior permission.  The Institute of Software, Academia Sinica,
makes no representations about the suitability of this software
for any purpose.  It is provided "as is" without express or
implied warranty.

THE INSTITUTE OF SOFTWARE, ACADEMIA SINICA, DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS, IN NO EVENT SHALL THE INSTITUTE OF
SOFTWARE, ACADEMIA SINICA, BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM
LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT,
NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION
WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.

License notes

Matches the COPYING file in the package and the BDF COMMENT block: use, copying, modification, and distribution for any purpose are permitted without fee, provided the copyright and permission notices appear in all copies, and the name of "the Institute of Software, Academia Sinica" is not used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution without specific, written prior permission. The wording is that of the X11/HPND/MIT family of permissive licenses.

License details are for reference only; the upstream original text prevails.

Build notes

Official X.Org release font-isas-misc-1.0.4.tar.xz (https://xorg.freedesktop.org/archive/individual/font/font-isas-misc-1.0.4.tar.xz, released February 2023, retrieved 2026-09-26, SHA-256 47e595bbe6da444b9f6fcaa26539abc7ba1989e23afa6cdc49e22e484cc438fc); gb16st.bdf and gb24st.bdf are taken unchanged. The 16px FangSong from the same package, gb16fs.bdf, is catalogued separately as ISAS FangSong (isas-fangsong). The BDFs are in GB2312.1980 GL encoding and are converted to Unicode at build time. Made in 1988 by the Institute of Software, Academia Sinica. The first import on 2026-08-21 used the copy in olikraus/u8g2 (tools/font/bdf), which appends 95 ASCII glyphs at the end of each file; their code points are invalid in GB2312 and were already dropped in transcoding, so switching to the upstream release leaves the catalogued glyphs unchanged.

Build warnings (3)

charset GB2312.1980: 169 glyphs unmappable to Unicode, dropped
no ASCII letters; pair it with a Latin font (upstream ships it this way)
no space U+0020; site previews show it as blank