{"id":137,"date":"2014-10-29T14:55:42","date_gmt":"2014-10-29T13:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pixnbgames.com\/blog\/?p=137"},"modified":"2015-08-21T23:53:07","modified_gmt":"2015-08-21T22:53:07","slug":"how-to-draw-russian-cyrillic-characters-in-libgdx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pixnbgames.com\/blog\/libgdx\/how-to-draw-russian-cyrillic-characters-in-libgdx\/","title":{"rendered":"How to draw russian (cyrillic) characters in LibGDX"},"content":{"rendered":"

When we develop for mobile devices, we have to keep in mind that propably our program will be used in several countries for users of diferent languages. A tool to facilitate the use of our software for these users is to translate our application into the local language of each user. This process is known as Internacionalization (I18N) and Localization (L10N). To know more about how to implement this in LibGDX, you can go to Official Wiki<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, one of the options provided to us\u00a0LibGDX<\/a>\u00a0is to can work with TrueType fonts (.ttf) through the extension gdx-freetype<\/a>. To know more about how to use these fonts, you can go to LibGDX Wiki<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By combining both tools (I18N \/ L10N and TTF fonts), we find that:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Each language uses a particular alphabet. This is, in brief, the set of letters and spellings that are used to represent the language in written form.<\/li>\n
  2. Typically, a font supports only a given set of letters or spellings.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    As result of the above two points, probably we need to use more than one TTF font for showing our program in determined languages. Next, we are going to show an use case by using as example the text \u00abHello World!<\/em>\u00bb translated to spanish and russian. It’s possible to work with other alphabets in a similar way.<\/p>\n

    Important:<\/h4>\n
      \n
    1. This is not a tutorial about internacionalization nor localization. It simply shows how to draw texts in LibGDX from diferent alphabets with TTF fonts.<\/li>\n
    2. Gdx-freetype works with UTF-8, so we need to use this encoding for the files of our project.<\/li>\n
    3. You can get source code at\u00a0GitHub<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

       <\/p>\n

      Creating the project (gdx-freetype)<\/h3>\n

      The first step is to create the project in LibGDX. We know we will work with TTF fonts, so it’s needed the check of the gdx-freetype<\/em> extension.<\/p>\n

      In this case I will call the project Gdx-Freetype-Example<\/em>. Note:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. In this project we will not use the physics library Box2d<\/code>. Then unckeck that option.<\/li>\n
      2. We enable the extension Freetype<\/code>, in section \u00abExtensions\u00bb.<\/li>\n
      3. Freetype<\/code> does not support HTML project, so we have to uncheck this project generation.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
        \"freetype_project_generator\"<\/a>
        LibGDX Project Generator<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

        For this project I have used this values:<\/p>\n