# Yozai Font: a Chinese handwriting font assembled from another font's parts

> Yozai is a Chinese handwriting-style font derived from Y.OzFont, built by splicing and adjusting the strokes and components of the original rather than by drawing new glyphs, and completed for the full CJK basic block with a neural font tool. It is a test release by a self-described non-designer, and the readme says so.

**lxgw/yozai-font** — A Chinese handwriting font derived from YozFont. 一款衍生于 YozFont 的中文手写字型。

- Repository: https://github.com/lxgw/yozai-font
- Stars: 1,280 · Forks: 20
- Language: Unknown
- License: OFL-1.1
- Published: 2026-10-19 · Updated: 2026-10-19 · Language: en
- Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/lxgw-yozai-font

## A derived font, built by splicing components

The project describes itself as a Chinese font derived from Y.OzFont, and the method of derivation is the interesting part.

The font is a handwriting-style one. Rather than drawing every glyph from scratch, the author uses strokes and components that already exist in the original font, splicing and adjusting them to make new characters, and writing the components by hand with a mouse when that is necessary.

That is a technique with obvious virtues and obvious limits. The virtues are that the results are consistent with the source font, because they are literally made of its parts, and that a designer can cover an enormous character set with a fraction of the work. The limits are that the author says so himself: the assembled characters may feel slightly out of place next to the originals, and where a component had to be rushed the joins can be stiff.

The readme is unusually upfront about the craftsmanship. The author says he is not a professional designer, that he did not consider aesthetics, that the result may look a little ugly, that the added characters may be slightly incongruous with the original, and that because of the time pressure some component splices are stiff. He adds that it is better than nothing, and invites feedback through issues.

That honesty is worth more than a polished description would be, because a handwriting font assembled this way is going to have visible inconsistencies, and knowing that in advance is what lets a designer decide whether to use it for a personal project or for a client deliverable.

## Three character sets, then a neural completion

The coverage is described as a sequence of stages, and the sequence is the story of the font's development.

The original work filled in the simplified characters that have a corresponding traditional character in the source font, then all the characters in the GB 2312 range, which is 6763 characters, then all the characters in the General Standard Chinese Character Table range, which is 8105, and then all the characters in the BIG5 range, which is 13058.

From version 0.860 onwards, the method changed. The CJK Unified Ideographs basic block, which is 20992 characters, was completed with a deep learning tool called zi2zi, and a small number of extension block characters were added as needed.

The credits list both the original Y.OzFont project and the zi2zi PyTorch implementation, and that pairing tells you the whole history of the project: it started as a careful manual effort with a small, deliberately chosen set of characters, and grew into a large set through a model that generalises from existing glyphs to missing ones.

The 20992 figure is the number that matters in practice for anyone setting Simplified Chinese text, because it is the basic block that covers essentially all modern usage. A font that covers the block and is missing a few extension characters will render almost anything you throw at it.

The readme also records the current gaps honestly, with the note that the font is still in beta and that some characters still use the Japanese writing style rather than the mainland Chinese one, and it marks a planned task to correct the writing of the GB 2312 characters to the mainland forms.

## Weights, scale and the mainland glyph corrections

Three deliberate changes separate Yozai from its parent font, and they are all about how the text reads in practice.

The first is scale. The character face was reduced to 95 percent of the original size, which is a small change that matters at text sizes, because a handwriting font designed for display use tends to look loose when set in a paragraph.

The second is that the Latin characters and the punctuation were optimised, which is the part of a derived font most often left alone and most often regretted. Punctuation in particular carries a lot of the texture of Chinese text, and a font whose punctuation came from a different design will show it at the end of a sentence.

The third is the largest and the most valuable: some Han characters had their writing modified so that they come closer to the standard glyph forms used in mainland China. The original font's forms leaned the Japanese way, and for a reader in China the difference is the difference between a document that reads as native and one that reads as translated.

The weights changed twice, and the changelog in the readme records both. The original was too light, so from version 0.715 a Medium weight was added. From version 0.717 there were four weights, Light, Regular, Medium and Bold, and from version 0.860 the Bold weight was removed again.

Removing a weight is an unusual move for a font project, and the reason is probably practical rather than aesthetic, since bold handwriting is difficult to keep consistent with a spliced construction and a bad bold weight is worse than no bold weight. The practical consequence for you is that if you need a bold in a heading, you will be relying on synthetic bolding or on a different face.

## The OFL limits that actually bite

The licence is the SIL Open Font License 1.1, and the readme separates the permissions from the restrictions in a way that is worth following closely.

On permissions: the font can be used freely, personally or commercially, without paying and without needing to notify the author, although the author says he would be grateful if you did. It can be distributed and shared freely, installed on systems, embedded in software or applications, and bundled and redistributed or sold together with any software, with the requirement that redistribution must include the full text of the OFL. It can be modified to make derivative fonts, and those derivatives must also comply with the OFL terms and conditions.

The restrictions are the part that catches people out. First, and drawn directly from clause 1 of the licence, selling the font file on its own is prohibited, in either the OTF or the TTF format. Second, from clause 5, the font cannot be distributed under a licence other than the OFL 1.1, and it cannot be mixed into a single font file with other fonts whose licences conflict, and the readme names the GNU GPL and the IPA as examples of such licences.

That second restriction is the one that matters for anyone who works in a company whose house style forbids copyleft artefacts, and it is worth checking before the font ends up in a bundle. The first restriction is the one that matters if you are tempted to sell a standalone font, which is what the caution notice at the top of the readme is about.

The OFL text is in the repository as a file named OFL.txt, and the readme links a Simplified Chinese translation of the licence provided by a third party, noting it is unofficial and for convenience.

## The resale warning comes first for a reason

The very first thing in the readme is a caution notice, and it is worth reading before anything else.

The author reports that a number of open source fonts, including this one, have been resold by unscrupulous merchants on platforms such as Taobao and Xiaohongshu, in violation of the OFL 1.1 clause that forbids selling the font file on its own. He asks that if you encounter such a shop selling this font, do not buy it, and explains why in two short clauses: the money you pay will not go to the author, and you will not receive any updates or any support.

That is a compact statement of the problem with resold open source, and it applies well beyond this font. A pirated copy of a free font looks identical to the real one, arrives with no update path, and generates no revenue for the person who spent years drawing the glyphs. The author has put the warning above the font description so that a visitor arriving through a search for a download link sees it before the download.

It is also a statement about what kind of project this is. A single author maintaining thousands of glyphs by hand, with a neural completion pass to cover the rest, is doing unpaid work that is worth a lot to the people who use it. The resellers are taking the output of that work and selling access to it.

For a reader evaluating the project, the warning is a signal of how the author thinks about the boundaries of the licence, which is exactly the right attitude for someone whose licence contains clauses that are easy to ignore.

## Where to get it, and the mirrors that lag

The download section lists four routes, and the caveats on each are the useful part.

The first is the releases page on the project repository, which is the authoritative source. The second, a mirror hosted on Gitee, is marked as struck through, with the note that it exists for regions where the GitHub download does not work well and that it may not be current, so that route is no longer offered.

The third is a pair of font catalogue sites, which the readme says are contacted by the maintainers for synchronisation after a GitHub update, with the warning that other sites listing free fonts for commercial use may also carry this font and may not have the latest version. The fourth is a cloud storage link with a password given in the readme.

So the guidance is clear even though it is spread across four items: take the release, and treat every mirror as a copy of a copy.

The release history explains why that matters here. The versions move very fast, with v0.866, v0.867 and v0.868 published within three days in September 2025, and the version numbers in the tag names carry the date alongside them. For a font that is gaining characters and correcting glyphs, being three releases behind means missing added characters and corrections, and a user with an old copy would find characters falling back to another font.

The repository itself is small, holding the readme, the licence text, a history file with the changelog, and a documentation directory with the preview images, which is all a font project needs when the artefacts are the releases rather than the source.

## Conclusion

Yozai is worth a look if you need a free handwriting-style Chinese typeface for personal or commercial work and can live with a font that is still in beta and uneven in places, because the coverage of the common character sets and the mainland glyph corrections are the parts that are hard to do yourself. It is a poor fit if you need a finished typeface with consistent quality, and it is the wrong choice if you intend to sell the font file on its own, which the licence forbids. Before you deploy it, check the character coverage against the text you actually set, read the OFL restrictions about redistribution and bundling, and download from the releases page rather than from a mirror that may be out of date.

## FAQ

### What is the Yozai Font and how is it made?

It is a Chinese handwriting-style font derived from Y.OzFont. New glyphs are made by splicing and adjusting strokes and components that already exist in the original font, writing components by hand where that is needed, and from version 0.860 the full CJK Unified Ideographs basic block of 20992 characters was completed with the zi2zi deep learning tool.

### Can I use the Yozai Font commercially?

Yes. The font may be used freely for personal or commercial purposes without payment and without notifying the author, and it may be installed on systems, embedded in software or applications, and bundled or sold together with other software as long as the full OFL.txt is included in the redistribution.

### Can I sell the Yozai Font on its own?

No. The readme states that, following clause 1 of the OFL 1.1, selling the font file on its own is prohibited in OTF or TTF format. The readme also carries a warning that this font and other open source fonts have been resold by third party shops, and asks readers not to buy from them because the money does not reach the author and no updates are provided.

### Which weights does the Yozai Font have?

Since version 0.717 there have been four weights, Light, Regular, Medium and Bold, and since version 0.860 the Bold weight has been removed. A Medium weight was added in version 0.715 because the original font was too light.

## Sources

- [Issues](https://github.com/lxgw/yozai-font/issues)
- [License: OFL-1.1](https://github.com/lxgw/yozai-font/blob/master/LICENSE)
- [lxgw/yozai-font on GitHub](https://github.com/lxgw/yozai-font)
- [README](https://github.com/lxgw/yozai-font/blob/master/README.md)
- [Releases](https://github.com/lxgw/yozai-font/releases)

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Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/lxgw-yozai-font