[HOW TO] install new fonts for different languages

[shantanu]

Hi everyone here are some instructions for others who are interested in installing fonts on their Droid that will allow them to see text in currently unsupported languages.

Here are the steps you need to take on your rooted Droid:
1) Download onto your computer a font that allows your desired language to be displayed. I suggest DejaVu fonts Download - DejaVu. DejaVu fonts display a lot of languages. Check to see if your desired language is supported.
2) Connect your Droid to your computer and mount it.
3) Open the DejaVu fonts zip file, find the file "DejaVuSans.ttf", then copy this file onto your sdcard in the root directory (in other words, directly onto the sdcard but not in any particular folder).
4) Rename the "DejaVuSans.ttf" file on the sdcard to "DroidSansFallback.ttf". Make sure you've renamed the file exactly as I've specified.
5) Unmount your Droid.
6) On your Droid, open up a terminal emulator application -- I used "Android Terminal Emulator" -- and type this exactly (make sure to be case-sensitive and do not type directions I include in parenthesis):

su (wait for the superuser screen, and press "yes")
mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
chmod 4755 /system/fonts/DroidSansFallback.ttf
dd if=/sdcard/DroidSansFallback.ttf of=/system/fonts/DroidSansFallback.ttf
reboot

After your Droid restarts, it should be able to support many more foreign scripts (such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Vietnamese). Try opening your Droid browser and find a page with text in a non-Roman script (like Hebrew). This worked like a charm.

[nagabushan.c]

Hi everyone here are some instructions for others who are interested in installing fonts on their Droid that will allow them to see text in currently unsupported languages.

Here are the steps you need to take on your rooted Droid:
1) Download onto your computer a font that allows your desired language to be displayed. I suggest DejaVu fonts Download - DejaVu. DejaVu fonts display a lot of languages. Check to see if your desired language is supported.
2) Connect your Droid to your computer and mount it.
3) Open the DejaVu fonts zip file, find the file "DejaVuSans.ttf", then copy this file onto your sdcard in the root directory (in other words, directly onto the sdcard but not in any particular folder).
4) Rename the "DejaVuSans.ttf" file on the sdcard to "DroidSansFallback.ttf". Make sure you've renamed the file exactly as I've specified.
5) Unmount your Droid.
6) On your Droid, open up a terminal emulator application -- I used "Android Terminal Emulator" -- and type this exactly (make sure to be case-sensitive and do not type directions I include in parenthesis):

su (wait for the superuser screen, and press "yes")
mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
chmod 4755 /system/fonts/DroidSansFallback.ttf
dd if=/sdcard/DroidSansFallback.ttf of=/system/fonts/DroidSansFallback.ttf
reboot

After your Droid restarts, it should be able to support many more foreign scripts (such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Vietnamese). Try opening your Droid browser and find a page with text in a non-Roman script (like Hebrew). This worked like a charm.

Thanks for the info, I tried installing kannada fonts, problem is its not rendering correctly, to be precise conjunctions are not supporting, I heard thats due to Harfbuzz is the rendering engine used in android, which is not supporting indian languages. Latest firmware from samsung and sonyercisson devices supports indian languages.

Please throw a light if you can help resolving this issue.

[ryukenden]

registered just to say thanks for this post. it did worked like a charm on SGN and the explanation is very good, made me feel like a programmer, after the extraction.