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I am creating an application which downloads names from server. These names can be any unicode language text which I need to render in XNA on WP7. The biggest problem I see here is WP7 xna system can't render unicode (especially complex script) well. I tried few asian scripts and it looks ridiculous. Some aisan scripts render a character differently depending on neighbor character (generally vowels). Spritefont just renders them one after another without giving any consideration to vowels.

I think I need something like freetype library to render vector fonts on runtime. I wish to know if there are any alternatives to overcome this issue.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ What font did you add as a spritefont? If you use the same font and type the same characters into Word, do they show up as expected? \$\endgroup\$
    – Nate
    May 20, 2011 at 21:26
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Nate Yes, I did some investigation into this. It seems like XNA dont have any support for Complex Text Layout (CTL - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_text_layout). I looked into shwan's blog - blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2007/04/26/…. Its very surprising. I dont know how others handle this situation. \$\endgroup\$
    – Vijayendra
    May 21, 2011 at 6:45

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Recently Microsoft announced using silverlight to render unicode texts in XNA with its mango update for WP7. I think this might solve this issue. I think one just needs to render TextBlock control into XNA, which can handle unicode well.

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I don't know if it supports all the fonts you're interested in, and it's rather old so there will certainly be some translation effort if you want to use it. But I figured I may as well post it in case it's useful:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/manders/archive/2007/01/12/stroke-based-text-rendering-in-xna.aspx

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Thanks so much Joel. Looks useful. But I think Mango Update for WP7 will resolve the issue. \$\endgroup\$
    – Vijayendra
    Jun 5, 2011 at 9:29

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