Custom ttf fonts are not showing properly in TextView on Android 4.4 KitKat

Question

I have some text which has some bolded parts. Until KitKat this strategy (as mentioned in this post) worked perfectly well

My strings resources file:

<string name="multi_style_text">NON-BOLD TEXT \n<b>BOLD</b></string>

My application code in fragment:

txtView.setTypeface(FontUtils.getOstrichRegular(this.getActivity()));
...
public static Typeface getOstrichRegular(Context context) {
   return Typeface.createFromAsset(context.getAssets(),
                                "fonts/ostrich_regular.ttf");
}

Currently (in KitKat), the bolded part is not shown in the custom font, the non-bolded part is shown in the custom font. In previous versions of Android, all of the text was shown in the custom font.

What gives?

Answer 1

So, after being frustrated by this bug, I searched around and found a solution to the problem. In my current project we use calibri.ttf font. that was working fine up to 4.4. Once i got the update to my nexus 4, All the TextViews with Calibri font were showing "ff" instead of the entire text.

THE FIX - get an .otf (open type font) version of your font, and put in the project, works like a charm. Too bad google didn't inform the developers on this and there's very little documentation on the matter.

Answer 2

Apparently this is a bug in KitKat and has been fixed in an internal tree.