Non Latin-based characters are not displayed.

[carecynthia]

Describe the bug
Despite supporting multi-languages, currently a fresh install of WiiFlow_Lite can not display non Latin-based characters. The default font needs to be replaced.

My first time installation was on a J-system menu Wii, and the language was automatically set to Japanese. So at first launch, the UI displayed almost no text on the buttons, making it seem like the setup had failed.
I spent quite a while looking for the root cause or solution, only to finally realize the problem is on non Latin-based characters, or more accurately, the font.
The easiest fix was to change the language to English...as I'm not very familiar with fonts.

What version of WiiFlow Lite
v5.5.4 and v5.5.3

On Wii or Wii U vWii
Wii

I wonder if previous versions ever supported properly displaying every language by default?

[Fledge68]

even though i'm the main coder for wiiflow at the moment, i am not skilled in fonts for other countries. but when you said

'My first time installation was on a J-system menu Wii, and the language was automatically set to Japanese. So at first launch, the UI displayed almost no text on the buttons, making it seem like the setup had failed.'

it sounds like you didn't have the japanese .txt file in the dev:/wiiflow/languages folder. or you did but since it hasn't been updated for quite some time the buttons couldn't find the text they needed.

i wish i could help but i'm not smart enough in this area to fix it.

[Fledge68]

ok i confirmed this. obviously Japanese and chinese are most effected. i'm going to attempt to find a fix for this. may have to ask blackb0x for some help or check out how usblgx handles it.

[Fledge68]

after days of checking the code for font handling and utf-8 text handling i found no problems. i eventually found that font.ttf in apps/wiiflow/imgs does not support chinese and japanese text. same goes for the font of rhapsodii shima. a quick fix for wiiflow without a theme is to rename or delete font.ttf in imgs folder. this make wiiflow use the default font of the wii. i think i will add a check if the wii's language is set to chinese or japanese to use the wii's internal font and not the font in imgs folder.

[carecynthia]

Aha! Didn't know that removing the font can force it to use the system font.
Just tried, looks pretty nice to me. May not be as good looking as the font of rhapsodii shima does, but I'd like the Japanese games to display their names in Japanese so it's a trade off I guess.