Support for supplemental non-English fonts in paint editor

[Paddle2See]

Currently, the Paint Editor supports only a small number of fonts - all limited to English characters. This leaves some of our non-English using Scratchers with very limited and cumbersome options. Here is an example of a procedure that one of our Russian users has developed for importing Cyrillic vector text into the Paint Editor as SVG paths. You don't have to speak Russian to see that the 14-step process is not for beginners:

http://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/33253/

Realizing that every new font added to the Paint Editor increases the size of the SWF, and there are very many character sets in use in the world, I'm wondering if there is a way to perhaps simplify the importation of supplementary fonts into a project (as vector paths) rather than making new fonts a permanent feature of the SWF.

[Paddle2See]

Note that if it's not feasible to add a flexible solution for importing fonts on the fly, one of our Russian users has suggested that we add this font at least http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Open+Sans as it supports Cyrillic characters.

[gromko]

Add Open Sans fonts for support Non-English characters!

[djdolphin]

Yes, I like Open Sans. I was considering adding it to one of my mods.

[djdolphin]

Would it be possible to have an online library of fonts and load them only when they're needed?

[gromko]

download fonts in offline mode?

[Paddle2See]

Here's another request for non-English font support

http://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/45658

It would be nice to let the users know if we plan to implement this - and when.

[Scimonster]

Yes, please find a solution to this! I conduct a Scratch class in Hebrew,
and constantly get thrown by the fact that the paint editor doesn't support
it.

On Wednesday, January 7, 2015, ntlrsk notifications@github.com wrote:

Reopened #231 #231.

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[ntlrsk]

We are now revisiting these various options and will update with the plan to address this very soon (hopefully by the end of this week).

[ghost]

Maybe we can use “Text Layout Framework”?! Quote: “We've been dealing with the same issue in Arabic for years. Flash and non-Latin letters don't always play well together. There is a new component out called Text Layout Framework for CS4 that is supposed to play better with foreign languages.”

http://help.adobe.com/ru_RU/as3/dev/WSb2ba3b1aad8a27b0-1b8898a412218ad3df9-8000.html

[kaschm]

Thanks for the tip, @dimon4ezzz ! We'll update with a plan soon.

[gromko]

A year has passed - nothing has changed, non-Latin characters in scratch - in the distant future

[ntlrsk]

We have worked out a new plan. First, it is important to understand that there is a problem with adding non-English fonts because the Scratch editor (SWF) file grows in size with each font. So the proposed plan is to add an option to use a System font, which would include all fonts on the user's computer. It would turn that text into bitmap after editing, so that the project can be viewed by others without that font. The interface details will need to be worked out.

[gromko]

This is an excellent plan - when will its implementation?

[ntlrsk]

The interface for choosing fonts within Scratch seems like it is tricky to figure out, since some people have so many fonts on their machine. Anyone have any suggestions for the interface for choosing a local system font within the image editor?

[compilergeek]

A year has apparently passed, and there is still no resolution? Is anyone able to start a pull request because the Scratch Team isn't going to fix this?

[towerofnix]

Perhaps, the first time a non-implemented-as-it-is-now character is pressed, Scratch downloads the charset font for that character? When somebody then opens the project Scratch goes through the vector text and loads the required fonts?

Just an idea. :P

[Scimonster]

Or it downloads the fonts according to the language the interface is in at
the beginning.
If i use the interface in Hebrew (for example), i expect to be able to type
in Hebrew.
It's not a perfect solution, but definitely would be an improvement.

On Tuesday, January 26, 2016, Liam notifications@github.com wrote:

Perhaps, the first time a non-implemented-as-it-is-now character is
pressed, Scratch downloads the charset font for that character? When
somebody then opens the project Scratch goes through the vector text and
loads the required fonts?

Just an idea. :P

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[towerofnix]

But what if somebody shares a project with Hebrew text in it? Then a person viewing the project can't see the properly rendered text.

[Scimonster]

So maybe it also has to be saved per project.

On Tuesday, January 26, 2016, Liam notifications@github.com wrote:

But what if somebody shares a project with Hebrew text in it? Then a
person viewing the project can't see the properly rendered text.

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#231 (comment).

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[chrisgarrity]

Another request for a font that supports polish characters (looks like open-sans would do it). https://mitscratch.freshdesk.com/helpdesk/tickets/50986