Japanese typographic history includes several formal revisions of character sets. The JIS C 6226-1978 (JIS78) standard was the first nationwide electronic kanji specification, defining stroke shapes that differ markedly from later JIS83, JIS90, and JIS2004 standards. The OpenType jp78 (JIS78 Forms) feature tag substitutes modern kanji with their authentic 1978 stroke forms. Safari Web Inspector provides native typographic tools to preview and audit JIS78 substitutions on macOS.
Typographical Role of JIS78 Glyphs
In literary history archives, vintage computing recreations, and legal documents referencing pre-1983 statutes, rendering exact JIS78 kanji forms is vital. Specifying font-feature-settings: "jp78" 1; activates Apple’s CoreText substitution routines, rendering historical stroke structures accurately without requiring legacy raster fonts.
Configuring JIS78 Glyphs in CSS
Implement JIS78 typography in your stylesheet:
.jis78-historical {
font-family: "Hiragino Mincho ProN", "Yu Mincho", serif;
font-feature-settings: "jp78" 1;
font-variant-east-asian: jis78;
line-height: 1.8;
}Inspecting Features in Safari Web Inspector
- Open the webpage containing Japanese kanji in Safari.
- Right-click the target paragraph and choose Inspect Element.
- Switch to the Font tab in Web Inspector’s right pane.
- Locate JIS78 Forms (jp78) under the Features list.
- Toggle the switch to observe live kanji stroke alterations rendered by CoreText across the character sequence.
Accessible Semantic Text Integrity
Because OpenType substitutions operate exclusively at the graphic layout layer, the accessibility tree retains standard semantic text representation, ensuring optimal search indexing and screen reader performance.