Zune 2.0 software is able to support Greek + Cyrillic + more Latin

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2008/01/05 10:16 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2008/01/05/6866927.aspx

In it, I pointed how that despite the Zune's clearly implied Unicode/CE roots that the full text display of large parts of Unicode was not there due to the lack of font support. And that furthermore, unlike the CE/Windows Mobile world the ability to add one's own fonts was not there.

I even took a picture of my Zune device while displaying an album with letters in the song titles outside of the fonts being used (click the link above to see it).

Anyway, then I did more recently blog Hats off to you, you naughty people...., which talks about a report that showed a successful Zune hacking job to get additional fonts on the device.

That post I linked to did not give instructions, but many people found instructions -- e.g. posts like How to: Zune Non-US Character Hack - Do It Yourself -- about which I'll just say that there is I believe a violation of one's license here since having these fonts on your desktop machine is not license to copy them to other places (or devices)....

Now in the meantime they have released Zune 2.0 and even made the software update available downlevel (incidentally and quite ironically also fixing one of the bugs that led to this decision, which was done in part for other potential applications that were not being updated), but to get back on topic the device side of the update includes an updated font that includes the same coverage as many of the core fonts in Windows for scripts like Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic!

Now I had no music in languages like Greek or Russian, so luckily Sergey was able to get a Zune showing off language support and I brought in my camera to take a pctures of it:

And what is even more fun s thst I brought my new 80gb Zune in, turned on wireless, and officially became part of the social by getting a song on my device. You can see it in these two pictures, with my Zune sitting on top of a very dusty dell Latitude D800 keyboard:

This is very exciting news, though I really am still unhappy that they are not finding a way to allow customers to add fonts.

Because even ignoring the font licensing rules and the tortuous nature of the steps in How to: Zune Non-US Character Hack - Do It Yourself, this is the kind of feature that could really enable a much more globally satisfactory experience, even beyond target markets.

If you live in one of those markets beyond the target, I would definitely encourage you to let them know! :-)

Oh, before I forget -- Goldie, there is a poster of Aimee Mann in my office, it has been there both times you were in meetings in my offce. Since I had the camera out I took a picture of it:

I suppose there is a lot going on if you take in the whole shelf, perhaps that Spies & Mango Pies bird on the right distracted you, or maybe it was the three cows....

Lack of Japanese support is the only thing keeping me from getting a Zune. I hope MS gets its act together soon.

Thanks for the picture. In retrospect - I still have no memory of it being there, not even sure which wall it's on. For all I know you just went out and bought the poster just to prove me wrong.

Heh. It is on the same one as the door (so once your back was to it, the other time it was to your right). I have witnesses who will verify it was there before I knew either you or Brandon even by mail, if you need the extra reassurance. :-)

I don't think that poster is actually for sale, though one could probably get it off the wall at a venue if one were so inclined....

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