Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Sinhala support on Android

Android has become the OS which powers many smart phones.But as it lacks built in Sinhala support,we have to add it by our own.Even these steps gives you a partial sinhala support in your mobile,the text won't be rendered well in most places.
Currenty,we have partial or full support on following;

1.Sinhala text displaying
2.Sinhala text input
3.Sinhala web browsing

For Sinhala text display in any app,you have to install a Unicode font with Sinhala support,basically you have to replace DroidSansFallback.ttf font in /system/fonts with Sinhala unicode font.(Your mobile has to be rooted for this and there are number of guides on the internet.Just "Google" about your mobile phone rooting.)These are wonderful guides on how to do this.

Kalinga's blog post
GayanX86's blog post

Now you got the "Sinhala text displaying" in your mobile.

There is no input method for Sinhala,hence I've created custom layout based on Wijesekara keyboard layout and submitted it to hackerskeyboard app development team.With there support now it's available on hackerskeyboard v1.16rc3 and above.You can get it from(or android market itself later),

http://code.google.com/p/hackerskeyboard/downloads/list

Please note that "Rakaranshaya" and "Kombuwa" is not working yet.If you are an android developer please try correct that problem.

Here are some screenshots of the input:


Even though now you can view sinhala webpages,it lacks proper rendering,There is an great app created by Dhanika,which can render Sinhala in webpages.You just have to install it.

http://code.google.com/p/sett-browser/

Hope you will able to get Sinhala support on android,if there is any prob please put a comment.I will post more about the input development.

8 comments:

  1. ela kiri machan...will try diz soon n let u knw da feedback.. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. අපිට කොහෙන්ද ඉතින් මේවා...ගත්ත දවසක ටෙස්ට් කොරන්නම්කො...ඒක නෙවේ, මේ ටෙම්ප්ලේට් ඒක නම් පට්ට

    ReplyDelete
  3. පට්ටෙටම වැඩ.. නියමයි!

    ReplyDelete
  4. තැන්ක්ස් ...! නියමයි ආ...! :D

    ReplyDelete
  5. මමත් දැන් මේක පාවිච්චි කරනවා...
    නියම වැඩක්... කොම්බුවේ ප්‍රශ්ණෙත් විසඳාගත්තනම් මරේ මරු...

    ReplyDelete
  6. කොම්බුව තමා අවුල..

    ReplyDelete