Viewing Asian Text on Windows Mobile Devices

Windows Mobile devices sold outside of Asian countries do not contain font support for Asian languages.

Microsoft does not offer Asian support, at least not that I could find on Microsoft.com. They do offer a hint, however, in the discussion of fonts in the ActiveSync help files.

Based on the help file, and some experimentation, here is how to enable an Asian language on your Windows Mobile device:

Assumptions

These experiments were done on the following configuration:

Handheld device: HP iPaq hx2495

Operating System: Windows CE 5.0

Language (codepage): Traditional Chinese

Font: MingLiu

Font size: 8.7MB (!!!)

Host PC: Windows XP Pro with Asian fonts installed

Step by step

Note: The following steps should work for any Asian font, but not necessarily Thai, Arabic, Hebrew, or Indian fonts (because they are so-called "complex" languages).

Locate the appropriate font on the host PC. They are located in the Windows/Fonts directory, and Windows Explorer will list them by font name, not file name. In the case of Traditional Chinese, the appropriate font is "MingLiU & PMingLiU (TrueType)", and the file name is mingliu.ttc.

Copy the file (mingliu.ttc) to the /Windows directory on the Mobile device. ActiveSync will report that it is copying and converting the file.

Reset the Mobile Device (this may not be necessary)

Testing the fonts

Plain text files coded in an Asian codepage, such as GB2302 for Traditional Chinese, will not display correctly in non-Asian versions of Windows Mobile. (If you know better, please send feedback to our feedback page).

To display Asian characters correctly, the document must be a Unicode document, such as a Microsoft Word or Excel file. You can also convert a text document to Unicode using your favorite text editor, such as UltraEdit or TextPad.

Here are the steps:

Convert the file to Unicode, unless it is already in Word or another Unicode application.

Copy it to the device, as you would with any other file

For a Word document, open it in Word Mobile, or an Excel document, open it is Excel Mobile. (Note: without having any third-party text-handling software on the mobile device, I believe these are the only two applications available.)

Select the entire document

Set the font to the desired font using Menu-->Format-->Font...-->MingLiU or PMingLiu (for this example).

You should see correct Traditional Chinese characters, or whatever font you selected.

Notes

There may be third party software available to allow full treatment of Asian text, including text entry. Microsoft does not seem to offer an Input Method Editor (IME) for Windows Mobile, but one might be available elsewhere.

Watch out for memory/disk space on the Mobile device. Asian fonts are big, and the Traditional Chinese font is 8.7 MB.

If you know better ways to achieve Asian support on a Windows Mobile device, please contact us via our feedback page.

Enjoy!

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