PREAMBLE: since API 17 (Android 4.2), there’s a method TextView.setTextLocale() that explicitly solves this problem for TextViews and derived classes. Assign a Japanese locale (Locale.JAPAN), and Unihan characters will look Japanese.
I have an application on Android that displays Japanese text in WebViews and TextViews. There are some Chinese characters (kanji) that look, by convention, differently in China and in Japan, but share the same Unicode codepoint. Normally, the browser would rely upon the lang tag to choose the correct glyph. On Android, they all default to their Chinese shapes, and I want Japanese shapes.
The problem is well explained in this article. This article also serves as a perfect illustration of the problem – when watched on Android (up to 2.2), the characters in the “Examples of language-dependent characters” all look the same, and Chinese.
Using the lang="ja" attribute does not help. Switching the whole system locale to Japanese does not help either.
I’m wondering about Android phones that are sold in Japan. Do characters like 直, 今, 化 look Chinese-style on those, too? I’m assuming not.
So the questions are: are there official localized images of Android out there? Can I get one to run on the emulator? Is the DroidSansFallback font still the only CJK-enabled font on those? And if it is, is it the same as on the vanilla USA Android?
I’m kind of hoping that the Japanese glyphs are hidden somewhere deep in the font (Unicode private area or something). If so, I could leverage them…
EDIT: located DroidSansJapanese.ttf, installed it on the emulator by copying into /system/fonts, restarted. It made no difference on the look of the Unihan article. Even the hint area of the Japanese text input (which should know better) displays as if Chinese.
How do I know the typeface name of the DroidSansJapanese.ttf? I have a feeling it’s still Droid Sans, same as in the built-in DroidSansFallback font. But if they contain the same typeface, what governs which one should take precedence? One would think – system locale, but apparently not. Fonts in Android are installed just by copying, right?
There are fonts with full Japanese support. I’ve heard some people talking about DroidSansJapanese.tff and TakaoPGothic.