[Mod] Japanese font texture for font_api [font_jp_noto]

[Yvanhoe]

This mod adds characters texture to allow the Font API mod (from display_modpack) to display Japanese characters.

This mod includes hiragana, katakana and an amount of kanjis that is probably complete but excessive.It also includes uppercase and lowercase latin letters.

Be warned that it weights 31 MB uncompressed. In future versions I shall restrict the amount of ideograms to the most commonly used (there are currently the 20 000 kanjis defined by the unicode standard, but far less are in common use.)

Dependencies: font_api

Github - Zip file

License: code under LGPL v3.0, texture under CC-BY-SA 3.0

Original font: Google Noto font, more specifically, Noto Sans CJK-Regular

License of the original font: SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1




Instructions

Spoiler

In order to actually write on the signs, we need to get around irrlicht's limited support of international inputs.

First, we need a version of display_modpack that will parse strings that include "\uXXXX" encoded characters: https://github.com/yquemener/display_modpack

Then, we need to use a tool to generate these strings. I use muhdnurhidayat (MNH48.com)'s tool from the [Unicode Parser CSM](https://github.com/MuhdNurHidayat/unicodeparser). It is included in tools/. There is [python 2 version](tools/UnicodeConverter.pyw) and a [python 3 version](tools/UnicodeConverter3.pyw).

Start UnicodeConverter along with minetest and type the text you want to put on the sign using your regular IME:



Then copy the Output string generated by UnicodeConverter



Make sure you select the noto_jp font in order to display the characters correctly:

Thanks
muhdnurhidayat (MNH48.com) for the initial advices and the the invaluable unicodeparser tool.

Pyrollo for the display modpack and the inclusion of straightforward tool to generate new fonts.

[Yvanhoe]

Several Japanese kids use a (non-public) server that I maintain and I thought it would be nice to be able to use Japanese signs.

I discovered that there is still a lot of work to make all the internationalization work correctly with non-latin characters in minetest, but as I understand unicode correctly and think it is very important to use minetest for international education, I plan on spending some time helping improve the support.

If you need help adding fonts for other languages, please don't hesitate to ping me. Thanks to the tools already there, it should be straightforward. There may need some adaptations to do for languages that use right to left order though.

[Astrobe]

Maybe this can help to choose the kanji characters? http://japanesecomplete.com/777

[Yvanhoe]

Thanks, but I think 90% of coverage is not enough. Imagine if you could not type one word every ten words you are typing! I was considering using the ~2000 official joyo kanjis (the ones that are mandatorily taught in school) and may end up doing that, but I feared this list would not be enough either.