Azerbaijani language support by Android 2.2?

Question

According to this Azerbaijani language is not supported by Android 2.2 - however they claim "Note: Android supports more locales than are listed above.". So how it is actually ? Is there support for Azerbaijani language? Are there issues writing applicaiton which have to display text in Azerbaijani?

Answer 1

Try just writing a test application that just displays some Azerbaijani text in Unicode. If it looks right, then your Android device has a Unicode font that includes the characters used in Azerbaijani.

If the text is not rendered correctly, then your problem will be adding the right font. On Mac OS X you would just drag-and-drop a font file into the right folder, but on Android you will need it installed in the operating system's display server. That might not be possible if you want to run on handsets that are locked down by their manufacturer.

If the font isn't there, maybe you can find a good Open Source Unicode font for Azerbaijani. File a feature request with the Android developers to get the font into the next release of Android. Unfortunately you'll have to wait a long time and will only work with recent releases.

If you're really desperate and you're willing to go to a lot of effort, you could build a font rendering engine into your application. I don't think that has to be as hard as it sounds. Then you will be able to run on any Android release and you won't have to wait around for the handset manufacturers to pick up the response to your feature request.