Re: Indic Font Support in Android

[Zubair Hussain]

Remove me

On Sep 14, 2011 2:04 AM, "Nigel Sheridan-Smith" <wtf...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Sankar,
>
> I'm not sure how big or small the solution to this will be... it is likely
> only the Google engineers (or phone manufacturers with internationalized
> handsets) will be able to tell you exactly what to do, and estimate how long
> it will take. I would say, based on my limited knowledge that its a
> reasonably large job, so it might be worthwhile seeing if anyone else wants
> to help first.
>
> Android uses freetype (for fonts) and ICU (for unicode support) - these are
> in the external/freetype and external/icu4c directories respectively. There
> are some truetype fonts already included specifically with Android. You
> would probably need to do the following:
> * download and build Android from source for a particular target (
> http://source.android.com) - this will probably take you a few hours to
> learn and complete if you have not done it before
> * add your font to the frameworks/base/data/fonts/ folder and modify
> Android.mk (or another .mk file) to copy your font to the target build area
> * investigate where internationalized data is stored - you would need to add
> some new "localization" information to the Android OS
> * potentially modify each of the Android default applications (probably
> adding new resource files) to use the new font and provide textual messages
> in your language(s)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Nigel
>
> On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 4:07 PM, Sankar <sankar.c...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Android does not support Indic fonts out of the box. There is a bug
>> filed about this at:
>> http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=3029
>>
>> I do not own an android phone, however, I am interested in getting
>> this bug fixed so that people can read indian languages in their
>> android phones. I am an open-source contributor and would like to fix
>> this issue if I can.
>>
>> In a typical linux box, if you copy the .ttf files to ~/.fonts folder,
>> the indic fonts will be very nicely rendered. Is this not possible in
>> Android ? Is there a list of technical limitations which should be
>> addressed to make Indic fonts available in Android ?
>>
>> Tamil, Bengali, Hindi, Telugu together forms more than 500 million
>> speakers and it is not a chunk that Android can miss. I tried asking
>> for help/directions in the bug itself. But it is filled with too many
>> "I too want" requests so I have decided to ask here. Can someone show
>> some pointers on what the technical problems in supporting Indic
>> languages are ? I will come up with a patch to fix as much as I can.
>>
>> Please CC me in the replies.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Sankar
>> http://psankar.blogspot.com
>>
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[Sankar]

[Nigel Sheridan-Smith]

Hi Sankar,

I'm not sure how big or small the solution to this will be... it is likely only the Google engineers (or phone manufacturers with internationalized handsets) will be able to tell you exactly what to do, and estimate how long it will take. I would say, based on my limited knowledge that its a reasonably large job, so it might be worthwhile seeing if anyone else wants to help first.

Android uses freetype (for fonts) and ICU (for unicode support) - these are in the external/freetype and external/icu4c directories respectively. There are some truetype fonts already included specifically with Android. You would probably need to do the following:

* download and build Android from source for a particular target (http://source.android.com) - this will probably take you a few hours to learn and complete if you have not done it before

* add your font to the frameworks/base/data/fonts/ folder and modify Android.mk (or another .mk file) to copy your font to the target build area
* investigate where internationalized data is stored - you would need to add some new "localization" information to the Android OS
* potentially modify each of the Android default applications (probably adding new resource files) to use the new font and provide textual messages in your language(s)

Cheers,

Nigel

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 4:07 PM, Sankar <sankar.c...@gmail.com> wrote: