Incorrect Unicode fonts for Romanian in all Nokia phones

Comments

(no comments yet)

Log in or Join to leave comments.

Article Metadata

---

Article

Created: rsandu (19 Oct 2008)

Last edited: hamishwillee (08 May 2013)

ID	Unofficial - No ID assigned	Creation date	October 19, 2008
Platform	S60 3rd Edition	Devices	Nokia E61, Nokia E61i
Category	Fonts	Subcategory	Romanian Unicode fonts

Overview

There is a bug in Unicode fonts used for Romanian language. Four characters in Romanian language are designated by incorrect Unicode codes.

Because of that, importing correctly written Romanian texts into the phone (for example, phonebook entries via PCSuite) leads characters in them to be displayed as garbage (small squares).

Current Romanian UI implementations în ALL Nokia phones don't follow the Romanian National Standards SR 13411:1999 and SR 13392:2004 (which, in turn, are 100% compatible with the Unicode UTF-8 set).

Description

According to Romanian standards, the CORRECT four characters are:

1. capital S with comma below - Unicode 0218

2. small s with comma below - Unicode 0219

3. capital T with comma below - Unicode 021A

4. small t with comma below - Unicode 021B

and NOT the following (as in current implementation):

1. capital S with cedilla below - Unicode 015E

2. small s with cedilla below - Unicode 015F

3. capital T with cedilla below - Unicode 0162

4. small t with cedilla below - Unicode 0163

This is a historic bug, propagated in time because of incorrect implementations in Windows, pre-Vista versions. The bug was finally corrected in Windows Vista.

For Windows XP, Microsoft now offers correct Romanian basic fonts via online updates (Times New Roman, Verdana, Arial) - please see here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=0ec6f335-c3de-44c5-a13d-a1e7cea5ddea&DisplayLang=en

Linux distributions also provide correct support for Romanian language. Starting from 2007-2008, popular distributions like Fedora and Ubuntu offer easy-to-use utilities for setting correct Romanian support.

How to reproduce

1. Have a Windows system with correct Romanian language implementation (comma-below fonts and Romanian national keyboard).

2. Install latest Nokia PCSuite.

3. Enter various texts (phonebook entries, SMS messages, etc.) using (the correct) comma-below characters.

4. Have a Nokia phone which is Romanian-enabled.

5. Export the above texts to the phone, via PCSuite.

Alternatively, one may exchange correctly-written Romanian text via SMS, e-mail, Bluetooth, etc.

RESULT: There are four characters that ar displayed as garbage (small squares) on the Nokia phone.

Solution

Please provide correct comma-below fonts in all Nokia phones and use them as default when the phone is set for Romanian UI.

Reference

http://secarica.ro/index.html (some of them in Romanian)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=0ec6f335-c3de-44c5-a13d-a1e7cea5ddea&DisplayLang=en