Fortunately the unicode will be self contained within flash, so that shouldn't be an issue, and most input is coming through flash input text fields - which was my main concern about having to embed big-ol double-byte fonts into swfs for either director or web use. The concern being that if I have to embed the double-byte font characters (like I usually do on my english projects to make sure it looks the same across machines), then the swf could get enormous.
Thanks for the info about the hiragana and katakana info... Would it be safe to say that most translation agencies worth their salt should provide material in all 4 scripts?
Thanks, ~Mathew
Kerry Thompson wrote:
Perhaps this is the wrong forum but I know there are quite a few international folks on this list and others who have done quite a few international projects... Anyway, I am about to embark upon a multilanguage project with multilanguage installers and had a few questions about double-byte fonts.
May I suggest that you pick up a copy of the July issue of MX Developer's Journal? They have a section devoted to multilingual projects this month. There are articles by luminaries such as James Newton, Tab Julius, and even ordinary guys like (ahem) me.
We tend to use flash alot for UI stuff, and seeing how it generally supports unicode, we think that would be the best route to take.
Are you going to use the swf files in Director? You won't be able to pass strings back and forth, because Director doesn't support Unicode. There are rather intricate workarounds--search the archives for the past 6 months or so for Mark Jonkman.
If you're going to do text input in Director, it's pretty much taken care of by the system, but you'll get multibyte Japanese text encoded in EUC or Shift-JIS. Once again, (ahem) my article contains more details.
what about dynamic input text with double-byte characters? One localization that we are doing is Japanese, and I know there are 4 different scripts for the language, but generally what is the best script to use, Romanji?
The only way to do a legitimate Japanese product is to support all 4 Japanese scripts: kanji, hiragana, katakana, and romaji. Romaji is the least important of the four, and absolutely cannot be used as the sole input. You would be laughed out of the Japanese market.
You don't have to do much to support Japanese input, though. Japanese Osen (Windows, Mac) have built-in IME's (Input Method Editor). When a user types in some text, you'll get whatever he types in, and the system will recognize it as kanji, hiragana, etc.
Cordially,
Kerry Thompson
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