This document explains how to add Asian and other language fonts to the Java Runtime JDK 1.1. More specifically, this document covers the JDK 1.1 special feature for adding these fonts to the Java Runtime. It is very likely that this feature will change in future JDK releases.
At this time, this document describes how to install Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Traditional Chinese fonts to your system.
If the core Java Runtime includes support only for Latin-1 fonts, then the
Runtime requires only one font.properties file. All other
font.properties files can be in the optional I18n package.
The JDK 1.1 release for Win32 platforms supports TrueType fonts. JDK 1.1 for Solaris supports outline fonts that can be handled by an X11 server, such as F3, Type1, and TrueType.
You must work with the font.properties file to add fonts
to the Java Runtime. The font.properties file is platform-
specific. It indicates the fonts that a particular platform uses for its Java virtual
fonts. Fonts are grouped by types or classes. Currently, the Java Runtime
supports the following classes of fonts:
There are several font.properties files that come bundled
with the JDK 1.1. You can find these files in the directory
../lib that is beneath the directory where Java is installed.
These files contain standard font environment information.
The explanations that follow assume that the readers of this document are
working in an English environment. In an English environment, you use the
font.properties file with no suffix on its file name, as
follows:
font.properties
However, if your environment is Japanese, Korean, Chinese, or Traditional
Chinese, then you must use the font.properties file that
corresponds to your particular environment. These files can be identified by
the country or locale suffix that is appended to the file name, as follows:
font.properties.<locale>
where locale is one of:
ja
ko
zh
zh_TW
...
Select the file with the suffix for the particular font that you are interested in.
Thus, for Traditional Chinese, you would access the file
font.properties.zh_TW.
There are two steps you must take to use Asian fonts, such as the Japanese font, on an English environment platform.
First, you must install the Japanese, Korean, Chinese, or Traditional Chinese font to your system. For Windows platform users, Microsoft delivers these Asian fonts free with the NT4.0 installation CD. Or, you can download these fonts from the Microsoft World Wide Web home page. Solaris users must contact SunSoft to request the Asian outline fonts for Solaris environments.
Once you have installed the fonts on your system, copy the font description
that you are interested in to font.properties. The easiest
way to add one Asian font is to rename the
font.properties.<locale> file to be the new
font.properties file. The locale symbol represents the font
name that you are interested in.
No editing is required when you replace font.properties
with font.properties.<locale> because
font.properties.<locale> is a superset of
font.properties.
These are the locale symbols that specify the different font properties files:
| Font Name | font.properties
Symbol |
| Japanese | ja |
| Korean | ko |
| Chinese | zh |
| Traditional Chinese | zh_TW |
Thus, to use the the Korean font, you copy or rename
font.properties.ko to
font.properties.
It is possible to use more than one Asian font in your runtime. To do this, you
must edit the font.properties file. This section describes
the edits you need to make to the file to use multiple Asian fonts.
The font.properties file defines certain information about
the fonts for your platform. This includes aliases, such as:
alias.timesroman=serif
alias.helvetica=sansserif
It also includes descriptions for the fonts. The descriptions differ between the
Win32 and Solaris platforms. Our examples use serif fonts to illustrate how
fonts are specified and converted, if necessary. However, the same entries
apply to other types of fonts.
In general, there are entries in the font properties file that specify the fonts you
want to use. These entries have the following format:
<virtual font name>.<index number> = <platform font name>, attributes
The virtual font name is the name of the font as recognized by the Java
Runtime. The platform font name is the actual name of the font on your
platform. For example, Dialog and Serif are Java font names, while Times and
Helvetica are the native font names on a Win32 or Solaris platform. The index
number specifies the order of searching for matching font glyphs, with zero the
highest priority.
There are three default serif fonts available on an English language Win32 platform. These fonts are:
In addition, the descriptions for these serif fonts in the
font.properties file are as follows:
serif.0=Times New Roman,ANSI_CHARSET
serif.1=WingDings,SYMBOL_CHARSET,NEED_CONVERTED
serif.2=Symbol,SYMBOL_CHARSET,NEED_CONVERTED
These three lines together indicate the indexes for the three serif fonts that are
available on this platform. Each line indicates one serif font, followed by up to
three arguments for that font.
The numbers (0, 1, and 2) that appear after the word
serif, such as serif.0, indicate the order
in which the font glyphs are searched for a corresponding match with the
Unicode, or Java string encoding, codepoint. Thus, if serif.0
and serif.1 both have the glyph that corresponds to the
same Unicode codepoint, then the glyph for serif.0 will be
used.
The first argument is the face name of the Win32 native font. Each line
names a particular font. For example, the line for serif.0
names the font Times New Roman, while the line for serif.2
names the font Symbol.
The second argument takes the form *_CHARSET. In our
example, it is either ANSI_CHARSET or
SYMBOL_CHARSET. This argument indicates the charset entry
of the corresponding font in Win32. (See the Win32 API document for more
details.)
The third argument, if present, is NEED_CONVERTED. This
argument indicates that the corresponding platform font cannot be accessed
with Unicode. When this argument is present, the Java Runtime needs to
convert the Unicode string to this font index before attempting to use the glyph
for the font. Fonts that have this NEED_CONVERTED argument
must have a corresponding fontcharset entry, which indicates the charset
converter to use to convert the Unicode string.
In our example, both serif.1 and serif.2 have the
NEED_CONVERTED argument. Both have fontcharset entries
in the font.properties file, as follows:
fontcharset.serif.1=sun.awt.windows.CharToByteWingDings
fontcharset.serif.2=sun.awt.CharToByteSymbol
The fontcharset entry for serif.1 indicates that, to draw
the WingDings glyph, the Unicode string should be converted using the
sun.awt.windows.CharToByteWingDings converter.
(Recall that the font.properties file has already established the font for
serif.1 as WingDings.)
The specification for the charset converter is described later in the section ÒThe Charset Converter.Ó
The current Win32 JDK build provides the following font properties files:
./lib/font.properties
./lib/font.properties.ja
./lib/font.properties.ko
./lib/font.properties.zh
./lib/font.properties.zh_TW
If you need a different font from what is provided, then you must create your
own font properties file.
The Solaris font.properties file uses a different format for
specifying fonts than the Win32 version. The Solaris version uses fixed-width,
rather than proportional, platform fonts. For example, the serif font on an
English Solaris platform consists of the following fixed-width fonts:
serif.plain.0=-linotype-times-medium-r-normal--*-%d-*-*-p-*-iso8859-1
serif.1=-urw-itc zapfdingbats-medium-r-normal--*-%d-*-*-p-*-sun-
fontspecific
serif.2=--symbol-medium-r-normal--*-%d-*-*-p-*-sun-fontspecific
serif.italic.0=-linotype-times-medium-i-normal--*-%d-*-*-p-*-iso8859-1
serif.bold.0=-linotype-times-bold-r-normal--*-%d-*-*-p-*-iso8859-1
serif.bolditalic.0=-linotype-times-bold-i-normal--*-%d-*-*-p-*-iso8859-1
These lines from the Solaris font.properties file indicate
the indexes for serif fonts with different styles. For example, the font whose
face name is serif and whose style is plain consists of
serif.plain.0, serif.1, and
serif.2. In addition, these lines indicate that the serif font
with the style italic consists of serif.italic.0,
serif.1, and serif.2.
Currently, the index of Solaris (X11) font is not a Unicode index. Because it is not Unicode, the font always needs to be converted. Each entry must have a corresponding fontcharset entry to indicate how it should be converted, as follows:
fontcharset.serif.0=sun.io.CharToByte8859_1
fontcharset.serif.1=sun.awt.motif.CharToByteX11Dingbats
fontcharset.serif.2=sun.awt.CharToByteSymbol
For example, the line:
fontcharset.serif.0=sun.io.CharToByte8859_1
indicates that all serif.0 fonts, regardless of whether the
type is plain (serif.plain.0), bold
(serif.bold.0), italics
(serif.italic.0), or bold and italics
(serif.bolditalic.0), will be converted using the
sun.io.CharToByte8859_1 converter.
The current Solaris JDK build provides the following font properties files:
./lib/font.properties
./lib/font.properties.ja
./lib/font.properties.ko
./lib/font.properties.zh
./lib/font.properties.zh_TW
./lib/font.properties.cs
./lib/font.properties.el
./lib/font.properties.hu
./lib/font.properties.lt
./lib/font.properties.lv
./lib/font.properties.pl
./lib/font.properties.ru
./lib/font.properties.tr
./lib/psfont.properties.ja
If you need a different font from what is provided, then you must create your
own font properties file.
The charset converter converts Unicode, or Java string
encoding, to the index of the font. For font drawing, the JDK 1.1 Runtime uses
the charset converter that is the subclass of
sun.io.CharToByteConverter.
To add your own font to your JDK 1.1 Runtime, you need to create a
charset converter and specify it in the
font.properties file.
The following example illustrates how to add your own platform font to
the Java serif font. In this example, your font contains 256 glyphs, which are
indexed 0 - 0xff. Your fontиs glyphs correspond to Unicode 0xe000 - 0xe0ff. This
example is divided into two steps. First, you create your
fontcharset converter class. Second, you specify your font
name and converter class name in the font.properties file
file.
This is the Java code for creating the fontcharset converter.
package mypkg.converter;
import sun.io.CharToByte8859_1;
public class CharToByteMyfont extends sun.io.CharToByte8859_1 {
/*
* This method indicates the range this font covers.
*/
public boolean canConvert(char ch) {
if (ch >= 0xe000 && ch <= 0xe0ff) {
return true;
}
return false;
}
/**
* This method converts the unicode to this font index.
*/
public int convert(char[] input, int inStart, int inEnd,
byte[] output, int outStart, int outEnd)
throws ConversionBufferFullException;
{
int outIndex = outStart;
for (int i = inStart; i < inEnd; i++) {
char ch = input[i];
if (ch >= 0xe000 && ch <= 0xe0ff) {
if (outIndex >= outEnd)
throw new ConversionBufferFullException();
output[outIndex++] = (byte)(ch - 0xe000);
}
}
return outIndex - outStart;
}
/*
* This method indicates the charset name for this font.
*/
public String toString() {
return "Myfont";
}
}
You must first set the font name in the font.properties file
file. Do this by adding an index entry for the font. For example, for a serif font,
add a line that designates the serif font followed by the next sequential index
number in the file. The Java Runtime requires that the index numbers for any
one font be continuous.
Thus, to add a serif font to our previous example font.properties file, you would insert the following line:
serif.3=<your own font name>
The index number must be the next highest index number in the properties
file. In our example file, we have already used serif.0,
serif.1, and serif.2. Therefore, the new
serif font must be serif.3. Had we used a number that was
discontinuous, such as serif.5, the Java Runtime would not
use that entry.
Next, you must define the converter for this font. This requires a
fontcharset entry for the new font, in this case,
serif.3. The following line is the
fontcharset entry that uses the converter created in the Java
code example:
fontcharset.serif.3=mypkg.converter.CharToByteMyfont
You must also ensure that your new converter is visible to the Java Runtime. To
ensure that the Java Runtime can see your converter, your java application
classpath must include the class path to the converter. In our
example, we must be sure that the class
mypkg.converter.CharToByteMyfont is visible to the Java
Runtime. The simplest way to do this is to put this class under your
$JDK_HOME/classes/myown/package directory.