source-han-serif

Source Han Serif is a free, open-source font family created by Adobe that covers Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters, along with Latin and other scripts. The name refers to a serif style, which means the letterforms have small finishing strokes at the ends of the main lines, similar to how traditional print typography looks in books and formal documents. The project supports Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese (including a Hong Kong variant), Japanese, and Korean, making it one of the more comprehensive Pan-CJK font releases available.

Adobe built the fonts using its own font development tools, called AFDKO, and the repository includes all the source files needed to rebuild the fonts from scratch. The downloadable versions come in several formats and configurations: standard OTF files for individual weights, OTC files that bundle multiple languages into one file for efficiency, a Super OTC that combines everything, and newer variable font versions in OTF, TTF, and WOFF2 formats. A download guide is included in five languages to help users pick the right configuration for their situation.

The repository is primarily useful to type designers, developers working on multilingual applications, or anyone who needs a high-quality serif typeface that covers East Asian scripts without a licensing fee. Someone who just wants to install the font does not need to build from source and can download a ready-to-use release directly from the releases page. Official documentation, including the design rationale and technical font readme, is available as PDF files linked from the repository.