Stroke length and order

How length is read

Each cubic, and each smooth cubic, is replaced by 24 straight chords at equal parameter steps. The length is the sum of those chords. A moveto does not add a jump. In these files every stroke is one subpath, and the only drawing commands are cubics and smooth cubics.

The unit is the KanjiVG box, viewBox 0 0 109 109. A length is rounded half away from zero to a hundredth of a unit. Means and medians on this page are taken from those rounded lengths. A mean of several lengths is itself rounded half up to a hundredth.

For a character of n strokes, with n at least 2, the place of stroke i is (i−1)/(n−1). It runs from 0 on the first stroke to 1 on the last. Ten bins of width 0.1 cover that interval, and the last bin includes 1. A character of one stroke has no such place. Early, middle, and late use the same integer cut as the stroke-type inventory: early when (i−1)×3 is less than (n−1), middle when (i−1)×3 is less than 2(n−1), and late otherwise.

The chord is the straight line from the first point of the path to the last point. In the SVG, y grows downward. The chord is a downward vertical when the end is below the start and (|dx| + dy)² ≤ 2 dy². That is the closed cone of 22.5° about straight down. A long vertical in the counts below is a downward vertical whose stored length is at least 40.

The lengths

Length by stroke index

Length by place in the character

Early, middle, and late

The last stroke and the mean

Three characters

Click a plate to replay. With reduced motion the finished character stays still. Cinnabar marks the longest stroke. Indigo marks the last stroke when that stroke is not the longest.

• Longest stroke
• Last stroke, when it is not the longest

Each stroke

A long vertical last

The longest stroke first

Length and order inside one character

Where the longest stroke falls