I'm trying to get Second Life to support Japanese characters (I'm not using a Japanese OS, and I'm not using the Japanese localization for the client)
EDIT: description changed, questions altered slightly
The first problem is all non-latin glyphs show as little boxes, unless I install the font "Arial Unicode MS" Once this font is installed I can view and enter Japanese characters. But there is one problem left....
lag.
Any time new text needs to be rendered, such as whenever someone speaks or sends me an IM, there is a pause of about half a second. This is caused by the option "log chat" and "log IMs"; with those disabled there is no lag spike.
The question part of this post:
Why does SL require a highly expensive font to provide non-english text? (Arial Unicode MS comes with Microsoft Office, and can be purchased for USD$99; any other source is now illegal) Other apps work just fine using built in Windows/Linux unicode fonts for the Japanese codepage; there is no need to use a massive all-in-one font that has tens of thousands of unused glyphs that will never be used.
Why does logging chat not support the use of unicode in a usable way?
Are there any general plans to support better internationalization of SL?
How does LL prioritize work on problems specific to non-English issues? Is this something that LL is concerned about and planning to address in a meaningful timeframe, or were the various localized clients and UTF-8 support just knocked out quickly and never intended as a proper feature but as more of a "it's there, it's better than nothing" type deal.