Creator (Java SE) and Asian Fonts

Maybe the following is common knowledge in the areas where that problem would be more serious. Sorry, I can’t read or understand any of the Asian languages, so I wasn’t able to find much on the subject.

I was trying to look at a localization problem in Creator on my SuSE Linux box. So I have an account on my box which runs in a Japanese locale. I tried to start Creator there and hey, why do I only see little empty squares instead of glyphs? I have a couple of Japanese fonts installed and KDE is mostly happy with the selection;-)

It turns out the jvm has it’s own font configuration setup. When you know what to look for, java.sun.com has a nice description. So I looked at the source files and quickly realized that SuSE Linux is not really supported with Asian fonts:-(

The description above has a little note that changing/adding those fontconfig files is a modification of the JRE and that Sun does not support modified JRE’s. So keep that in mind when you read and/or follow the reminder of this.  I live always outside of the officially supported setups, so for me that note was not a problem;-)

So I compared the fontconfig files for RedHat and SuSE and so I found what I needed to look for;-) I got and installed the following packages (Those packages might have similar names in other distros!)

• For Japanese: kochi-substitute
• For Chinese: ifntchia, ifntchib, ttf-arphic, ttf-arphic-bkai00mp, ttf-arphic-bsmi00lp, ttf-arphic-gbsn00lp, ttf-arphic-gkai00mp
• For Korean: baekmuk-ttf

Now came the fun part:-( The fonts had different font names from the ones in the RedHat fontconfig. So I looked at all the fonts and created a new fontconfig for my system. That works at least for my Japanese setup. Here is a link to my fontconfig.SuSE.properties. This file would go into JRE_HOME/lib/.

I’m happy now and can look at my initial problem;-)

Have fun and don’t forget to reproduce your problems with the little squares before reporting;-)
— Marco