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Japanese character support on iOS
The default Arial font displays Japanese characters. However, if I try to use an imported font, I get the warning that dynamic fonts aren't supported on this platform. Then the Japanese characters don't display for that font.
What exactly is going on with this default Arial font? If dynamic fonts aren't supported, then why does Arial work? Why can't I get a different font to behave the same way as Arial?
I just realized that the default Arial font doesn't even work right on the actual iOS device.
Do you know where I can get a Japanese font that works in Unity? I've tried downloading a few different ones so far and so far they all look garbled in the texture.
@Gillissie : Let me know it is not solved, I can help you!
Answer by Eric5h5 · Dec 05, 2011 at 06:49 AM
You can use a Japanese font. Since dynamic fonts aren't supported, the characters have to be pre-rendered to a texture. Since the maximum texture size is 2048x2048 (or 1024x1024 on older devices), that limits the size of the characters to fairly small dimensions.
Really? So what is done for Chinese which has over 50,000 characters?
You'd delete the characters from the font that you aren't using, and go with a subset. Try to include as few characters as possible.
I found a free Japanese font in the Unity assets store. Trying it now.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem adequate. I pasted TWO characters that I got from my translator, and only one shows up. That's not very good odds. I don't know what each character means.
Answer by BlacKatFever · Dec 15, 2011 at 08:26 AM
As Eric5h5 mentioned, you can use Japanese characters, but you will be limited by the size of the texture that you import. The font that you downloaded is probably your best bet. The problem you probably encountered is that it "only" includes the two forms of writing (96 characters) plus all of the kanji (characters) that are taught in elementary school (about 1000), the characters used for city / prefecture names, and a few extra words for games like axe, armor and whatnot.
You may want to sit down with your translator and try to find alternative ways to write what you want or edit the texture to include the characters that you need.
Japanese support is trailing a bit, but with Unity coming out in Japan soon (if not already) I imagine things will pick up in the near future.
Unity "comes out" in all countries simultaneously; distribution is 100% digital so it's not like they need to ship copies locally. China is currently #2 in terms of Unity sales, after the U.S. South $$anonymous$$orea and Japan are third and fourth. A local Unity office was established in Japan a few months ago.
Sorry, let me be a bit more specific. Japan does have it's own local office now and word (at least at the last CEDEC) was that it will prompt a Japanese language version of the engine (that hopefully includes support for Japanese fonts in $$anonymous$$ono.)
Unfortunately, that won't do much to alleviate the OP's texture problem.
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