How do I get a BrightSign player to display non-Latin characters in BrightAuthor:connected?

Note: The XTx44/43, XDx34/33/32/30, HDx24/23, LS424/423, and 4Kx42 models can display non-Latin characters (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew) by default, but you'll likely still want to assign a font set to replace the basic default font.

HDx22, LSx22, and HDx20 models use a default Latin character set to display text. This is true whether the player is displaying Live Text, Ticker Zones, or HTML 5 content. For these models, you must assign a custom font to display non-Latin characters. 

Why does the font display correctly in BrightAuthor:connected, but not on the BrightSign player?

The BrightAuthor:connected user interface can utilize any font set installed on your operating system, while a BrightSign player can only display font sets that are written to the SD card. In order to display non-Latin characters in a presentation, you must get the correct font onto the SD card. How you get the font onto the SD card depends on what method you are using to publish the text. Please see below for details.

Note: BrightSign players can display any TrueType Font (.ttf or .ttc) file. Other font file types are not supported.

Live Text

You can specify a font for a single Live Text element, or you can choose a default font to use with all Live Text elements:

To choose a font for a single Live Text element:

1. Create or open a Live Text state.
2. Drag and drop a Live Text element from the Widgets section.
3. Navigate to Layer Properties > Set Text Parameters.
4. Select Local Font under Font.
5. Locate and open the non-Latin font file you wish to use..

To choose a default font for all new Live Text elements:

1. Navigate to Edit > Preferences.
2. Select the Live Text tab.
3. Click the Browse box next to the Font field.
4. Locate and open the non-Latin font file you wish to use.
5. Click OK to apply the new default font.

Note: The new default font applies only to Live Text elements created after this change is made.

Ticker Zones

To change the font of a ticker zone:

1. Navigate to Edit > Playlist in the secondary toolbar.
2. Select the Ticker zone and click the Zone Properties button next to the zone layout view.
3. Click the Browse box next to the Font field.
4. Locate and open the non-Latin font file you wish to use.
5. Click OK to close the Edit Zone box and apply the font to all text in the zone.

Note: This change does not apply to other Ticker zones in the presentation.

HTML 5

There are two ways to display non-Latin characters in an HTML 5 zone: 

• The page CSS can call the font from local storage. Make sure to place the font file in the root of the site folder that is contained in the local storage. You can also add font files to HTML 5 states in BrightAuthor:connected. 

• If the player is retrieving the HTML 5 page file(s) from a remote source, it can download and display any web fonts called by the page.