[Solved] message was cropped and render un-usable, sometimes, for chinese fonts.

There's a new cutting edge update --- 2v19.67. This update might resolve the issue of Chinese text displaying improperly within the messaging app itself, which is where you end up if you tap on the message when it is displayed. This is a separate issue to the matter of text not displaying properly when first shown on the watch. I have been working with 2v19.60 and can confirm that Chinese text now displays properly outside of the app --- i.e. when one views the message without interacting with it.

@Gordon I will get back to you regarding a list of common Chinese characters. I am in fact aware of one that isn't sourced from an unthinking algorithm, but I would like to see if there are alternatives.

But judging by that Bangle.js screenshot of the about app the firmware is not updated to cutting edge version there.

hi, if you ppl can kindly teach me how to identify the latest firmware, i may be able to try myself. thanks

btw, it's simply click the cutting edge rom link in GB.js, and then click the "upload" button, correct? i did saw the v67 as the cutting edge rom.

or i missed some steps?
thanks

i tried again in GB.js, clicking the .67 ROM and upload.
it upload something to the bangle,
after reboot, the "about" screenshot is the same.
nothing happened.

ok,
now it showed .67,
after i long press the bangle for 10s,
then choose reboot or something.

it scared me, i worried i did something wrong when it say flashing...
let's see how's the msg, thanks

(i cant test at the moment, the msg didn't pop up in the bangle)

worked somehow, thanks.

ps: i need to re-install the msg lib and msg ui to make the msg to pop up.

the whole msg is within the screen now so no info is lost.

thankyou.

btw, i'll test /w "msg list" later.

This site has a download to a text file containing every character in the Big5 encoding scheme for Traditional Chinese characters, sorted by frequency of use. Although it's from the 90s, the corpus it pulls from is huge, having over a million tokens. It was compiled by an academic source.

For Simplified Chinese, one can consult the PRC's Table of General Standard Chinese Characters (Tongyong Fangui Hanzi Biao 通用规范汉字表). It consists of over 8000 characters and is divided into three tiers from most to least frequent, per the government's analysis. You can download a text file of it here at Wikisource. Once downloaded, you will see that each tier is enclosed in curly brackets.

Per the document, tiers one and two consist of 3500 & 3000 characters respectively and meet the needs of the sectors for education and publication. Tier three consists of an additional 1605 characters and includes characters you'll see in names, technical jargon, and idioms from classical literature (i.e. archaic words). The characters within each tier are not sorted by frequency (the first person pronoun wo 我 appears in spot 761, for example), so this source is more providing batches of characters one is likely to encounter.

Between the two of them, the Traditional Chinese source has the better frequency sorting, but in the grand scheme of things, both should fulfill the need of knowing which characters are essential. Now, there's no definite answer to the question of how many characters you should take from each. Due to the poor organization of the PRC's character list, I wouldn't take less than 3500 so that the essentials can be covered. In the Traditional character list, that would cover characters up to the 99.68 percentile in usage.

EDIT: I have talked it over with a colleague, and I think using 2500-3000 of the most common characters would sufficient if we're hurting for space. This site sorts Simplified characters by frequency, but they don't offer a text file of it. I don't really know what you'd need to make the locales, so do let me know. Depending on how you go about things, you don't need a separate list for Traditional characters, for example.

EDIT 2 This would make an excellent reference for characters to have. Use unicode, of course, though.

so for the latest GB.js + latest firmware,
tested on msg list + msg UI too,
working in these two now.
fonts worked for 12, 14, 16, 18.
thanks

I'm pleased to say that I can also report that the issue seems to be resolved now. No problems with either the initial notification or opening the message in the messaging app.

That's great news! Nice to get this properly sorted.

@houshou_m thanks for all your research on this! Actually even 8000 characters from the first 3 bits of the PRC list would probably fit just fine into the font file. I did manage to fix the issues with the font file format so we can have all chars, but it needs the cutting edge firmware (or 2v20 when released) so isn't ideal - it also takes ages to upload, so having a cut down file would be great!

I just need to have a think about how best to package it up so apps can use it (I'd rather not have to have a Chinese fork of the message app to get it working!)

currently it works well,
even works in msg list's musci control and can display the song's chinese name.

used for several days and all msg now read meaningful,
thanks

I think it would be a good idea to edit the title of this thread to include "[Solved]" in it without the quotes so that others can see this issue has been taken care of.