Nokia N8, RM-596 Symbian^3 Keyboard and Font - Lan...

Question

Back in the 'old' days of Nokia Symbian S60 Devices. Nokia has decided that each phone sold to each region (Europe, China, North America, Middle East Africa, India, Thailand) would have separate language packs.
If you live in North America, you probably get Latin Fonts without support for CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean), Arabic, Hindi, Hebrew.... etc. and the Keyboard is limited to English, French, Spanish, maybe Italian...
So now, the iPhone and the Android has come out. It has a unicode font set that will display almost every single character of any Latin-based or Foreign non-Latin based language.
So when you are in the US, live in the US and speak English as your mother tongue. But also speak Hebrew, Chinese, Korean, Thai, Japanese, Spanish, French... your iPhone/Android will be able to browse web pages, read text messages in these languages...
BUT on a Nokia Device... you are stuck. 
If you bought a phone in the US. You most probably see ? or 'squares' when going to a foreign languages website or when you receive a message in a foreign language outside your 'pre-destined' language pack.
Then, you need to say, input something in Japanese... but you can't because your keyboard set does not support it.
In the end, many people had to go to Nokia Care and have their phones re-flashed to their desired language. Those who speak more than what Nokia provides as language packs are hooped.
For example, someone who needs Thai, CJK and French cannot do any typing or reading for all these languages in the same device because the regional language pack in Latin-Based Languages.
With the iPhone/Android, you can!!!!
Of course, you can create your own unicode font and place it in E:\ or F:\ to override the Nokia pre-installed limited font set... and then hope that there is a 3rd Party FEP (IME) that will override the Nokia (Virtual) Keyboard that will work with your device so you could input in a language that is not English.
In short, this is a PAIN when Nokia does not release a fully flexible firmware that is truly UNIVERSAL in nature that works with the WORLD and make the phone a WORLD PHONE!
I am, we are, all of us are tired of hacking into our phones, changing language packs, fonts, FEPs to make our Nokia Device suit our needs.
So... my question to the Nokia N8 Developers, Sales & Marketing Team.
Does the Nokia N8, rather Symbian S^3
a) Does the Font installed in the Nokia N8 (Symbian S^3) Device support all languages, foreign languages, Double-Byte Characters so like someone in the US or Canada or the UK or maybe even Europe or China.... can read something in a foreign language?
b) Does Nokia have a Universal IME, e.g., FEP that will allow users to switch language input?
OR do we have to find hacks and workarounds again?
Please HELP! I need to know before I buy another Nokia Device and get disappointed!
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Answer 1

OK. This is confirmed. Font replacement in the S^3 Device Nokia N8 is the same as previous (minus a few devices that required the font router)
I am going to re-edit my Nokia Sereis 60 Font again... because I used an ugly but almost complete Unicode Typeface.
Just place your 'modified font' in E:\Resource\Fonts or F:\Resource\Fonts. The font should have the same font name, font family as what the S^3 device ships with.
Simple as in N97 and N97 Mini Font Replacement and older Nokias that do not require the 'Font Router' application that cannot be installed and used in some S60 devices.
Just don't know what the size limitations are this time.
This is from the S^3 Developer's Guide on Fonts
Symbian^3 Product Developer Library > Symbian Guide > Text and Localization Guide > Font and Text Services Collection > Font Store Component > Font Store Tutorials >
The font store automatically loads all files in \resources\fonts\ on all drives at startup. The search path is soft to hard ( Y:, X:, W:, ..., C:, B:, A:, Z and if two or more files have the same name the first one found is used. This means that files in the ROM (Z can be replaced with files on user drives.
The font store assumes that the files are in an appropriate format (see). Unsupported font files require a corresponding font rasterizer plug-in.
To install a font file at startup:
Copy it into \resources\fonts\ on any drive.
Restart the device to restart the Font and Bitmap server.
It is also possible to load a font file dynamically at run time. It is not possible to install a new font rasterizer at run time, however, so font files installed at run time must either be bitmap fonts or supported by an existing font rasterizer.
To dynamically install a font file:
Call CWsScreenDevice::AddFile() , specifying the file to be loaded.
Nokia just gave me a new project to do. I don;t know if I should thank them or curse them for not providing this basic feature. Font + Languages!