Question

I am new in android. I want to know does android support Unicode. If yes, then how can we use it through java code. I have written a program

TextView tv = new TextView(this);
tv.setText("Hello, চন্দন");
setContentView(tv);

The Bengali unicode characters are coming as boxes.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

“Supporting Unicode” – which is simply a character encoding standard – and displaying Unicode text in a way that can be read properly are whole different things.

The latter requires both a proper font for the script concerned and a complex text rendering engine which applies rules embedded in the font to display text properly. In Windows this is handled by system library called Uniscribe, on Apple systems by ATSUI, and on Linux systems by Pango. Android is based on Linux but unfortunately Google seem to have removed the parts for handling complex scripts. (A rather strange decision since most Android devices are for communications including text.) Complex scripts work fine on other mobile devices using a Linux based operating system like the Nokia N9 and N900

Android also makes it difficult for users to install additional fonts or keyboard layouts that can be used by different applications without “rooting” their phone or tablet.

A few manufacturers of Android devices have implemented support on their own (e.g. Sony Ericsson’s ST and MT series phones seem to support Devanagari and other Indic scipts very well.) On some Android phones Indic scripts will render OK in the browser – because the browser developer has added support of their own – but will not work in other applications.

Please see: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=4153

Until this issue is properly fixed in Android, most devices running this operating system seem to be a poor choice for users who want to use scripts like Devanagari, Tamil, Bengali, Kannada, Punjabi, Telugu, Tibetan, Khmer, Sinhala, Malayalam, Burmese, and so on on their smart phone or tablet.

The part of Android that needs fixing to support complex scripts is libskia.so and libwebcore.so. So, if you are writing applications to support Indian languages, you might want to try replacing these libraries with your own modified versions.