Using hebrew with the android emulator

Question

I want to be able to run a \"Hello World\" application on my android emulator in hebrew

How can I do that? is it supported?

thanks

Answer 1

Though android does not have complete support for Hebrew if you are just displaying text, then it turns out to be pretty easy to do.

First you want to add a Hebrew font to your app. For this you simply put a true type font file (with Hebrew characters) in your assets directory. Then you load the font and use it on your view. For any view that inherits from TextView (which includes just about any view that displays text), you do the following:

AssetManager assets = getAssets();
Typeface font = Typeface.createFromAsset(assets, "hebrewfont.ttf");
view.setTypeface(font);

This will cause Hebrew characters to be visible. You may need to use the RTL mode character (\u200F) to force your text to display in the correct order. You may also need to set the gravity to right in order to right align the text.

I've found no way to get the scrollbar to appear on the left side. :( Cantilation marks to however display properly starting in android 2.2. I've tested Nequdot in all versions since 1.5, and they work as well. You may want to use some of the precombined characters, such as shuruq (\ufb35) instead of vav+dagesh (\u05d5\u05bc), as this isn't necessarily handled properly.

I have had good results with the DejaVu font, which is freely available.

Answer 2

Although this has been asked a long time ago, there is a native Hebrew support in later versions. The avd with API15 (Android 4.0.3) can display Hebrew nicely out of the box. I'm not sure which version is the earliest with this capability.