CTL (Complex Text Language) support in Android

Question

I am trying to develop Android IME for Asia language (require complicated rendering such as changing glyph forms, reordering character order, etc). In PC, the use of GTK, Pango, Graphite is sufficient. In Android how can I solve rendering of Unicode for Complex Text Language.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

If you can use NDK, you can use harfbuzz and freetype together. without any dependencies. Otherwise you can stick to the Android drawText method which is provided by Canvas class.

Answer 2

You should be using the Harfbuzz stack provided within the Android. If you look within Pango in PC, there is a shaper component called Harfbuzz. Same should exist for Android. Passing any asian language through this stack get the job done (changing glyphs, reordering etc. )