Hindi on an Android Phone

This is just an app I am developing on the side. It uses Devanagari scripts to render the text, rather than displaying images as most of the similar apps in the Android Markets do.

Part 1 of the problem was how to load the hindi font in the code and get the display to render it. If you try this on a phone without Hindi support - which is the vast majority of the phones out there, then all you see is squares instead of the text.

This was pretty simple. If you want to load a custom font, this is what you do :

1. Get the specific font you want to bundle with your application. Lets call it Hindi.ttf
2. Put it in your project under the "assets/fonts" folder. You will need to create the folder 'fonts'. Not necessary to have the exact name, but I use it as it denotes what the files int the folder are. 
3. Now you need to tweak your code a bit as you need to load the font before you render the text. This is quite simple - use something like the following :

//Font work
Typeface tf = Typeface.createFromAsset(getAssets(), "fonts/Hindi.ttf");
// Get the UI element handles
mText = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.body_text);
// Set the title and read the file for the text
mText.setText(readRawTxt(pName));
mText.setMovementMethod(new ScrollingMovementMethod());
mText.setTypeface(tf); // setting font for the text. 

 Now when you run the program, you will get the fonts loaded and rendered, which brings use to Part 2 of the problem.

Part 2 of the problem is that the maatras are not getting aligned properly. For this I have so far not been able to figure out how to fix it. If you know , let me know. If I get to know about it, I will update this post.