In SX Microcontrollers, SX/B Compiler and SX-Key Tool, George Herzog wrote:

Well I have managed to get this problem into two clearly separate parts.

First, 
I need 'bitmapped fonts', not 'outline fonts' -
  The bitmapped font provides date on each bit in a grid.  In my case I plan to use a 24x24 bit grid.

Truetype and various other schemes are outline fonts.  These seem to have advantages in being graphically easier to modify to adjust for different pixel and printer resolution, but are more demanding of computing power due to their adjustiblity.

There are BITMAPed Chinese Fonts that are easy to buy, but what can I do with these if I cannot look and select from thousands of characters?  There are also BITMAPed Font creators, but I would have to create each character individually as I went along.

So we come to Second, 
I need to come to terms with a system that will actually give me access to characters in a genuine usable scheme.  

Unicode took over because BIG5 and GB were a big buggy in how they handled 16bits as double bytes.  
You would go along with Chinese and then suddenly have a few Western Chracters slip in.  I am not sure why it happened, but it was quite prevalent.  Unicode also seems to accommodate all the characters of all the world languages within it's encoding scheme -- not just Asian languages or Chinese.

Fortunately, I have TwinBridge installed as I was able to buy a licensed copy here from a Clearance Item Sale for 90% off and I have kept it updated.  I even have a book of documentation.  Up to this point, it has always seemed cryptic.  This is where much of the muddle of Unicode, GB, or BIG5 comes into play.   Also where I might sort it out.   

I really don't care which I use as long as I can get a file created that has a coherent string of byte codes [three per vertical line times 24 for horizontal movement].  It appears that each character would take 72 bytes to have a complete bitmap - some of that might include 'white space' for horizontal separation, or maybe not.  I can add the separation in software and fully use the 24 dots for better resolution.
 
Incidentally, I have been Googleing around in Chinese Bitmaps and page two of my Google search referred me to Parallax Forums, this thread!  Information seems somewhat sparse and dated.

And yet, that makes it really an interesting challange as there are a lot of graphic LCDs that can use Chinese if one understands how to get access to the appropriate Bitmap data.

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