Devanagari/Marathi font

Question

I am developing an Android app for regional magazine which is in Marathi language and from OS 2.2 and above. I am able to use custom fonts for the devices which does not support Devanagari/Marathi natively using typeface.

But the result is not desired and the Marathi text does not look any better. I have following problems with the custom fonts.

1. Extra horizontal space between two words or character
2. Extra vertical space between two line
3. Collapse of two lines
4. Does not works on all devices
5. Joint characters(जोडाक्षर e.g.'त्या') are not showing well

I have tried many fonts like utsaah,mangal,arialuni,shivaji but none of them have full support.

I have seen one of very good marathi app here which works on Android 2.1 and above. Can anyone please help me? How can I use a font which supports all Android devices?

Sleet

Please provide me solution as well if you found. – Kappenne

It can be the font you are using? – Leodora

Answer 1

I don't know if it is possible to fix the problems you listed in your question using custom fonts.

But let me suggest you an approach to display your content using WebView. In a WebView marathi should look fine. You can use custom fonts as well. The only difference is that instead of composing xml layouts you will have to create web pages (html+js) and package them in your app.

A couple of how-to-start guides:

• developer.android.com
• developer.chrome.com

An alternative to this solution would be using a framework. The app you referenced to (Sakal) uses Appcelerator Titanium.

Hartzell