Add eastern languages input to Blender #51283

System Information
OS X 10.6 through macOS 10.12
all hardware configurations

Blender Version
Broken: all versions (as far as I know), including 2.78
Worked: never

Short description of error
Blender is unable to accept Japanese text input. In almost any other Mac application, when the input source is switched to Japanese the application can accept Japanese text. Note that Japanese text input appears to work fine on Windows builds. This may pertain to other Asian languages as well, but I have not verified it.
This lack of support is a pity, considering that Blender is otherwise fully supporting Japanese translation of menu items and such. If you go to Blender User Preferences > System and enable International Fonts for Japanese in all three available categories you will find that Blender will add new objects with Japanese names - instead of "Cube" you will get "立方体" ...but you will not be able to directly rename it to another Japanese name. You can however paste Japanese text from the clipboard and it works.

Exact steps for others to reproduce the error

Enable Japanese text input on the Mac. System Preferences > Language & Text > Input Sources (may vary depending on OS version)
Enable Japanese text input (sometimes referred to as "Kotoeri").
Confirm Japanese text input is working. This can be done in Text Edit. Use the icon in the Menu Bar to switch to Hiragana input (represented by an あ character). Now when you type "aka" (meaning red) it should concert to "あか". Converting further to kanji will produce results such as "赤".
Try this in Blender. Try to rename the default cube object to "あか" or "赤" and you will find it is impossible. Blender simply refuses the input.
Next, try to create a Text object and type Japanese text in it. This fails as well, not surprisingly. There is no way to type Japanese into a text object, even when a Japanese font (such as KozGoPr6n-Regular) is selected. Again, it can be pasted from the clipboard, but not typed.

**System Information** OS X 10.6 through macOS 10.12 all hardware configurations **Blender Version** Broken: all versions (as far as I know), including 2.78 Worked: never **Short description of error** Blender is unable to accept Japanese text input. In almost any other Mac application, when the input source is switched to Japanese the application can accept Japanese text. Note that Japanese text input appears to work fine on Windows builds. This may pertain to other Asian languages as well, but I have not verified it. This lack of support is a pity, considering that Blender is otherwise fully supporting Japanese translation of menu items and such. If you go to Blender User Preferences > System and enable International Fonts for Japanese in all three available categories you will find that Blender will add new objects with Japanese names - instead of "Cube" you will get "立方体" ...but you will not be able to directly rename it to another Japanese name. You can however paste Japanese text from the clipboard and it works. **Exact steps for others to reproduce the error** 1. Enable Japanese text input on the Mac. System Preferences > Language & Text > Input Sources (may vary depending on OS version) 2. Enable Japanese text input (sometimes referred to as "Kotoeri"). 3. Confirm Japanese text input is working. This can be done in Text Edit. Use the icon in the Menu Bar to switch to Hiragana input (represented by an あ character). Now when you type "aka" (meaning red) it should concert to "あか". Converting further to kanji will produce results such as "赤". 4. Try this in Blender. Try to rename the default cube object to "あか" or "赤" and you will find it is impossible. Blender simply refuses the input. 5. Next, try to create a Text object and type Japanese text in it. This fails as well, not surprisingly. There is no way to type Japanese into a text object, even when a Japanese font (such as KozGoPr6n-Regular) is selected. Again, it can be pasted from the clipboard, but not typed.

Changed status to: 'Open'

Added subscriber: @quantumanomaly

#100460 was marked as duplicate of this issue

#96039 was marked as duplicate of this issue

#85990 was marked as duplicate of this issue

#73812 was marked as duplicate of this issue

Added subscriber: @mont29

This is more of a TODO really… Issue being, non-latin (and especially, eastern languages) requires advanced engine to type them - each OS having its own system. We implemented those for windows and linux a while back, would be great to get it for OSX as well, we just need an OSX dev from Japan, China or other concerned country to do the work…

Added subscribers: @hamsteriscoming, @ankitm

Added subscribers: @Mahir_Shaharia, @Harley, @CharlieJolly

Added subscriber: @2046411367

Added subscriber: @hzuika

@quantumanomaly
Hi Seth. L!
I submitted patches about Input Method support.
D11695 is the main patch.

If you have a build environment, it would be great if you could test it and give me feedback.

Thank you.

This issue was referenced by 83e2f8c993

It seems the patch is only about few eastern language. Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin) and Korean as far as I'm concerned it won't fix the problem with other eastern languages.

Yes, the patch I submitted is only for Japanese, Chinese and Korean support.
I'm Japanese, so unfortunately I don't know how to input other eastern languages.
I would like to leave it to the developers who are proficient in those languages.

How'd you added Japanese support? I mean what source files you were you experimenting on or how you added glyph support for Japanese language? With these and few more questions answer I might be able to add Bangla language support I think.

Bangla language support is great!

I did a lot of work on intern/ghost/intern/GHOST_WindowViewCocoa.h.
I followed the NSTextInputClient protocol and implemented the appropriate methods.

For more technical details, Apple's official documentation may be of help

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nstextinputclient?language=objc

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/TextFonts/Conceptual/CocoaTextArchitecture/TextEditing/TextEditing.html

I'll try to explain it a bit.

Mac OS keyboard events are first handled by the keyDown method of this file. HandleKeyEvent is the one that processes the input characters as they are, just like in English. And interpretKeyEvents are for external programs (such as Input method for Japanese) to perform various operations on the input characters. When the external program performs the operation, the various methods defined in this file are called.

For the Japanese language support, I implemented setMarkedText and insertText, which put the Japanese characters sent by the Input method into the GHOST event and pushed it.

This was the only work I had to do, because when Japanese input was supported in Windows, the GHOST event, Window Manager event, and insertion and drawing processes in source/blender/editors/interface were implemented.
I didn't have to do anything else after letting the GHOST event take care of it.

I don't know how Bangla language is input and how well it is supported in Blender, but if Bangla language has a special input method like Japanese and it is not implemented in Blender yet, it might be more work (Character drawing process, etc.).

@Mahir_Shaharia - I might be able to add Bangla language support I think.

I think the only thing required for Bangla is to get the Bengali-Assamese alphabet into our international fonts. That's just the Unicode glyphs in the range U+0980 - U+09FF. I'll add this to our "to do" list.

Added subscriber: @brecht

@Mahir_Shaharia reported #85990 about Windows, while @hzuika worked on macOS. They're quite different implementations, and if there is an issue with Bangla support on Windows that would need to be solved in the Windows IME implementation in Blender.

From #85990, it also seems this issue might go beyond missing glyphs in the font.

@brecht

Yes, I remember testing that in #85990 now. And yes, this is an IME issue. I just installed the Bengali input language (Windows) and text input is entered inline like Korean. So while hitting regular latin keys you get Bengali characters and what is already shown might change depending on what is typed next.

We'd still need the glyphs though, so added a task (to myself) - #89713.

In #51283#1188235, @brecht wrote:
@Mahir_Shaharia reported #85990 about Windows, while @hzuika worked on macOS. They're quite different implementations, and if there is an issue with Bangla support on Windows that would need to be solved in the Windows IME implementation in Blender.

From #85990, it also seems this issue might go beyond missing glyphs in the font.

Most eastern languages are written in a manner where they join with each other like fast English handwriting does. Arabic language is among them. So I first thought that adding glyphs might not work out but few days ago I saw this issue blender/blender-addons#62011 where an addon was used for fixing that issue. Not only the writing was perfect but the alphabets were connecting with each other. So that was the reason I said adding glyphs might fix the issue.

@Mahir_Shaharia

Yes, there are a few different issues involving different languages.

As you mention some languages, like Arabic, have their characters altered to join them up together, which we generally call “text shaping”. This is not available in Blender now but we have a long-term task to add that. https://developer.blender.org/T67452

Some other languages enter text differently. They might use a supplemental window to select alternates, or previous characters already entered might be altered by the additions of new ones, etc. These use an “IME”, vary greatly between languages, and are quick tricky to do well. We currently support IME text entry for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean but with differing bugs between them and we have various patches to improve them.

With all of these though our font still needs the glyphs. Our font currently contains 54,000 characters and supports most major languages, with some notable holes. https://developer.blender.org/T89713

Added subscribers: @olafchou, @PratikPB2123

@Mahir_Shaharia - I might be able to add Bangla language support I think.

We now include a complete Bengali font as of {e9bd6abde37c}

Added subscribers: @hoanguk, @OmarEmaraDev

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Add eastern languages input to Blender #51283