Characters show up as boxes when using AWT components.

Question

Having installed on a Windows XP english OS the asian languages packs (with fonts included, from Microsoft) and knowing that with MS Gothic, Gulim and Simsun you can display japanese, korean and chinese characters it seems that on JRE 1.5 and up this is not possible (boxes appear instead) on any applet.
How to reproduce:
Label l2 = new Label("Japanese chars: \u8457\u4f5c\u6a29");
Workaround:
Step 1. Rename ..\jre\lib\fontconfig.properties.src to ……\fontconfig.properties
Step 2. Modify the following line:
sequence.allfonts=alphabetic/default,dingbats,symbol
to
sequence.allfonts=alphabetic/default,dingbats,symbol,japanese,chinese-ms936,chinese-ms950,korean
How is this possible? On JRE 1.4 this was working. Also another fix is to use Swing components instead but this is not realistic for a big project.
Any help will be greatly apprecied.

Answer 1

The problem is related to the JRE v. 1.5.0_11 or greater. In JRE 1.4.2_13 for each language there was a configuration file that Java was using to determine which fonts to use for different categories of objects.
The problem is encountered only for AWT components.
Starting with JRE 1.5 (http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/intl/fontconfig.html) there is only one configuration file (fontconfig.properties.src) for all the languages. Since the character subsets supported by given fonts often overlap, in the file separate search sequence properties are used to define in which order to try the fonts when rendering a character. In the default version of the file this properties do not specify also the asian languages.
We have to do the following things:
*1.* You must first install into Windows the support for asian languages: Control Panel - > Regional and Language Options
� On the Advanced tab add the conversion tables for all Asian languages (this action may not be required).
� On the Languages tab check �Install files for East Asian Languages (this action is required)
Restart the computer.
*2.* Assure you have the needed asian fonts : batang(fopr korean), simsun, gulim, mingliu, msgothic(for japanese) installed.
*3.* Rename ...\jre\lib\fontconfig.properties.src to ��\jre\lib\fontconfig.properties. By doing this the fontconfig.properties file will be used by the JRE as the default configuration file.
*4.* Modify the following line:
sequence.allfonts=alphabetic/default,dingbats,symbol
to
sequence.allfonts=alphabetic/default,dingbats,symbol,japanese,chinese-ms936,chinese-ms950,korean
*5.* Assure that in the file the logical to physic font binding, binds to existing fonts.
Obs: If step 1 is skipped the titles of the windows will still have boxes.
Hope it helps.
Donoiu Cristian