MP2 - V2.1 Couldn't show chinese in the skin? (1 Viewer)

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Terrence

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My PC had a problem so I have to reinstall windows 10. I was using ver 1.15 and chinese without any problems (yes I made some translation on my own).

After installing ver 2.1 today, I tried to enable chinese as described on this tread :
[solved] - Couldn't show chinese in the skin?

It doesn't work even I copy the arialuni.ttf to the same directory. The issue is exactly the same, all chinese character is now show as a blank square.

Any ideas?
 

ge2301

Lead Design MP2
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  • January 11, 2014
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    My PC had a problem so I have to reinstall windows 10. I was using ver 1.15 and chinese without any problems (yes I made some translation on my own).

    After installing ver 2.1 today, I tried to enable chinese as described on this tread :
    [solved] - Couldn't show chinese in the skin?

    It doesn't work even I copy the arialuni.ttf to the same directory. The issue is exactly the same, all chinese character is now show as a blank square.

    Any ideas?
    The used fonts are not including Chinese characters. You would need to exchange the font in the skin folder to another one supporting Chinese, but name it exactly as the current one. Unfortunately there is no other solution currently.

    Here for example the location for BlueVision skin: MediaPortal-2/MediaPortal/Source/UI/Skins/BlueVision/Skin/BlueVision/fonts at master · MediaPortal/MediaPortal-2 · GitHub
     

    Terrence

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    I am giving up at this point :(
    There are 5 locations using default-font.xml. I made changes to them to use arialuni.ttf.
    • C:\Program Files (x86)\Team MediaPortal\MP2-Client\Plugins\BlueVision\Skin\BlueVision\fonts\default-font.xml
    • C:\Program Files (x86)\Team MediaPortal\MP2-Client\Plugins\BlueVision\Skin\BlueVision\themes\default-large\fonts\default-font.xml
    • C:\Program Files (x86)\Team MediaPortal\MP2-Client\Plugins\SkinBase\Skin\default\fonts\default-font.xml
    • C:\Program Files (x86)\Team MediaPortal\MP2-Client\Plugins\Titanium Extended\Skin\BlueVision\themes\Titanium Extended\fonts\default-font.xml
    • C:\Program Files (x86)\Team MediaPortal\MP2-Client\Plugins\WMCSkin\Skin\WMCSkin\fonts\default-font.xml
    And I change the language setting in setup. That screen show correct chinese font !
    The chinese font problem is still there. However, now I am getting part of EPG correctly.

    I am going back to v1.16 for now...



    language.png main.png screen.png
     

    ge2301

    Lead Design MP2
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    I am giving up at this point :(
    There are 5 locations using default-font.xml. I made changes to them to use arialuni.ttf.
    • C:\Program Files (x86)\Team MediaPortal\MP2-Client\Plugins\BlueVision\Skin\BlueVision\fonts\default-font.xml
    • C:\Program Files (x86)\Team MediaPortal\MP2-Client\Plugins\BlueVision\Skin\BlueVision\themes\default-large\fonts\default-font.xml
    • C:\Program Files (x86)\Team MediaPortal\MP2-Client\Plugins\SkinBase\Skin\default\fonts\default-font.xml
    • C:\Program Files (x86)\Team MediaPortal\MP2-Client\Plugins\Titanium Extended\Skin\BlueVision\themes\Titanium Extended\fonts\default-font.xml
    • C:\Program Files (x86)\Team MediaPortal\MP2-Client\Plugins\WMCSkin\Skin\WMCSkin\fonts\default-font.xml
    And I change the language setting in setup. That screen show correct chinese font !
    The chinese font problem is still there. However, now I am getting part of EPG correctly.

    I am going back to v1.16 for now...



    View attachment 189919 View attachment 189920 View attachment 189921
    The default-font.xml is not so important for you. It contains only the name of the default font. However all skins have at least two fonts. From your screenshots I can see, that you didn't change the bold font. Leave the xml file as it is and exchange all font files with your arial file, but keep a mentioned the current font name. Example: there is a sans.ttf, rename your arial.ttf to sans.ttf and overwrite the existing file. Do it for all fonts and backup the previous ones, if you would like to go back later. Unfortunately the arial font is copyright protected and does also from design point of view well, so I can not integrate it. We might have a better solution in future. In case you have free Unicode fonts, that look nice, you can share them with me and I can check them. The ones I found caused problems so far.
     

    Terrence

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    Thanks for the quick response. I went back to v1.16 already. One good thing about v1.16 is only one language file to be translate. We are using Traditional Chinese here but MediaPortal only come with Simplified Chinese :confused:

    Could you use the Google/Adobe Noto Fonts? It support most languages on the world. I am not sure about the license...
    Google Noto Fonts

    It is not as beautiful as I wish but good enough :)
     

    dhrto

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    Yeah same problem here with Korean characters. It can be fixed, but requires some text editing of .xml files, hardly end user friendly. I reported this earlier during the Pre1 build. I just cannot understand why the development team won't switch back to the font used in MP1. Everything worked out of the box there.
     
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    ge2301

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    Yeah same problem here with Korean characters. It can be fixed, but requires some text editing of .xml files, hardly end user friendly. I reported this earlier during the Pre1 build. I just cannot understand why the development team won't switch back to the font used in MP1. Everything worked out of the box there.
    No xml editing is necessary as I explained, just replacement of fonts. We can not switch back, because we never used Unicode fonts, MP1 is another product, we are not based on. I also explained earlier the reason, there are only 1-2 free fonts and those do not fit to the style and caused problems with special symbols. I could assume, that the font can be switched in settings in future. @morpheus_xx whqt do you think about that? A simple option "use Asian font" and a second resource will be used.
     

    dhrto

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    @ge2301 thank you for the fast reply. Yes I agree, overwriting the font is the quickest workaround. I definitely don't want to sound ungrateful, but could you please help me understand? Since I can just overwrite the font and get it working, it seems to me it is not a technical issue. So the possible reasons to not use the unicode font as default could be:

    1. copyright issues? But then I don't understand why it can be used without problem in MP1 (Titan skin)? The Titan skin doesn't bundle it, but seems to rely on the font being present in the Windows installation.
    2. design issue? That's a tricky one. IMHO function should never be sacrificed for form, but I know opinions differ greatly on that (I work in engineering and have dealt with a lot of architects on that matter...)
    3 ...?

    So again I would like to emphasize this is by no means meant as an attack, but I just want to get a clear picture of the why.
     

    ge2301

    Lead Design MP2
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    1. copyright issues? But then I don't understand why it can be used without problem in MP1 (Titan skin)? The Titan skin doesn't bundle it, but seems to rely on the font being present in the Windows installation.
    I don't have MP1 installed and don't know which fonts are used there. In case they are not embedded, it could be helpful in terms of copyrights. Currently I know for MP2 only the possibility to integrate them into the package. I guess I need to install MP1 once and see.
    2. design issue? That's a tricky one. IMHO function should never be sacrificed for form, but I know opinions differ greatly on that (I work in engineering and have dealt with a lot of architects on that matter...)
    As I'm a designer the design has my focus and of course the font needs to fit to the total setting. Also not all skins should use the same font. The WMC skin is a "clone" of WMC, so it will also use the same/similar font as WMC.
    Readability for certain font sizes and font colors is also an issue. The function of MP2.1 is given. The option to switch to asian layouts is on my OPL. My target is to have function and design covered. As we also use Japanese in my house, I've also a personal interest.

    "[...]caused problems with special symbols". There are partly symbols for birth, death, ... used in artist details etc. Those symbols were all messed up with unicode fonts.

    So again I would like to emphasize this is by no means meant as an attack, but I just want to get a clear picture of the why.
    No problem, I didn't see it as an attack.
     
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