Enfour Typography · Since 1992
Enfour Typography: a Japanese type legacy
From 1992 Enfour’s media laboratory built Japanese fonts and font tools for the Macintosh, including the world’s first CID font product, the first CID font package, and the first embeddable third-party CID fonts. This is the archive of that work, in English.
Overview
What Enfour built for Japanese type
Enfour Typography covers the font products Enfour Media Laboratory, Ltd. and Enfour, Inc. developed and published between 1992 and 2010. The company was founded to improve Japanese desktop publishing on the Apple Macintosh and specialised in Japanese digital fonts, gaiji (extended characters), and CID font technology.
- Gaiji: the Gaiji Kit series (1992–1997) and the Enfour Gaiji DX Series (1998) added thousands of characters missing from standard fonts.
- CID fonts: the ATM Gaiji Kit (1994) was the world’s first CID font product, the TypeBank Professional Font Series (1995) the first CID font package, and ENFOUR TYPE COLLECTION TypeBank 01 (1999) the first embeddable CID fonts from a third party.
- Typeface publishing: TypeBank, Shintaro Ajioka Kana, Typos Allmighty, Comic-Font, Tokyo-Font, and Keitai-Font.
- Tools: Kanji Edit Kit and GAIJI TOOLS, used by independent designers including the FONT1000 project.
Enfour also gave Japanese-font technical support to other font vendors and printer manufacturers.
Product lines
Explore Enfour typography by product line
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Enfour Gaiji DX (1998) added about 1,500 gaiji to Mac OS and Morisawa DTP fonts, in i, TrueType, ATM, and PS editions plus option packs.
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Enfour’s font-creation tools, from the 1992 PS Gaiji Kit to Kanji Edit Kit 2.5 and GAIJI TOOLS, let designers build Japanese fonts and gaiji.
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Enfour published TypeBank’s Japanese typefaces from 1995: the first CID font package and, in 1999, the first embeddable third-party CID fonts.
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Enfour’s kana fonts: the Shintaro Ajioka Kana Series (Komachi, Ryokan, Tsukiji, Yukinari, Kodoken) and Typos Allmighty’s 24 Typos kana.
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Comic-Font (2001) put manga speech-balloon lettering into TrueType for Mac and Windows, and Enfour partnered with CELSYS on comic fonts.
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Enfour’s TrueType screen fonts: Tokyo-Font for Internet for Mac email and web, and Keitai-Font, which showed i-mode emoji on computers.
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Enfour Music Gaiji (1996) put RIS 506, the record industry’s character set of music symbols and pictographs, on the Mac: a forerunner of emoji.
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FONT1000 was a project of 25 Japanese type designers who made and sold their own fonts with Enfour’s Kanji Edit Kit, released July 2001.
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Archived technical notes for Enfour fonts: Mac OS compatibility, PDF/CID embedding, gaiji and CID download services, ATOK, and updaters.
Directory
Every Typography page
- Mac OS 8.5–9 Compatibility and Output Devices
- PDF/CID Laboratory: Embedding Japanese Fonts in PDF
- Gaiji Download Service Archive
- CID Variant Switching Download Service Archive
- Gaiji DX with ATOK and Input-Method Dictionaries
- Marukan Compatible Vertical Writing Support
- Software Downloads and Licences
- Enfour Font News and Events Archive
Browse by type: Gaiji fonts · PostScript & CID fonts · TrueType fonts · Kana fonts · Font tools · Download services · Technical notes · Typeface design
Timeline
Timeline of Enfour typography, 1992–2010
1992
Enfour Media Laboratory founded (May). PS Gaiji Kit released (November).
1993
TT Gaiji Kit for TrueType.
1994
ATM Gaiji Kit: the world’s first CID font product.
1995
TypeBank Professional Font Series: the world’s first CID font package.
1996
TypeBank series expanded in March and December, with Shintaro Ajioka Kana. Enfour Music Gaiji brings RIS 506 pictographs, a forerunner of emoji, to the Mac.
1997
Typos Allmighty (May) and PS Gaiji Kit CID Edition (August).
1998
Enfour Gaiji DX Series: TrueType, ATM, and PS editions.
1999
ENFOUR TYPE COLLECTION TypeBank 01 (February), the first embeddable third-party CID fonts, and TypeBank 02 (May).
2000
GAIJI TOOLS succeeds Gaiji Edit Kit; Gaiji DX i Edition; MACWORLD Expo/Tokyo 2000.
2001
Keitai-Font, Kanji Edit Kit 2.5, Comic-Font, the CELSYS partnership, and the FONT1000 typefaces.
2002
Tokyo-Font for Internet.
2003
Enfour ends TypeBank sales as TypeBank moves to OpenType.
2010
Typos Allmighty sales end (31 March).
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about Enfour Typography
What was Enfour's font business?
Enfour Media Laboratory, founded in May 1992, developed and published Japanese fonts, gaiji products, and font tools for the Apple Macintosh, and gave Japanese-font technical support to other font vendors and printer manufacturers. The work continued at Enfour, Inc. into the 2000s.
What is a gaiji font?
Gaiji are characters outside a computer’s standard character set, such as rare kanji in personal and place names, circled numbers, and specialist symbols. A gaiji font like Enfour Gaiji DX adds them so they can be typed, displayed, and printed like ordinary text.
What did Enfour contribute to CID font technology?
Enfour’s ATM Gaiji Kit (1994) was the world’s first CID font product, the TypeBank Professional Font Series (1995) was the world’s first CID font package, and ENFOUR TYPE COLLECTION TypeBank 01 (1999) was a third-party world first: CID fonts that can be embedded in PDF.
Which typefaces did Enfour publish?
Enfour published the TypeBank family (23 typefaces), the Shintaro Ajioka Kana Series, Typos Allmighty, Comic-Font, Tokyo-Font for Internet, and Keitai-Font, and showcased the FONT1000 typefaces made with its Kanji Edit Kit.
Are these font products still sold?
No. These are historical products: Enfour ended TypeBank sales in March 2003 and Typos Allmighty sales on 31 March 2010. The pages are kept as a record of the work, and historical prices are not shown.
Where can I find technical notes for old Enfour fonts?
The Technical and Support Archive keeps Mac OS 8.5–9 compatibility tables, PDF/CID embedding notes, the gaiji and CID download-service indexes, and ATOK dictionary information.
Enfour today
Japanese text expertise, still at work
The knowledge behind Enfour’s typography lives on in our dictionary and language apps, such as the Sakura Kanji Dictionary, Luminous English–Japanese Dictionary and Korean/Japanese AI Dictionary. The same engineering culture now builds FrontierStack, Enfour’s server-management app for the Mac.