Language issue

[DYBDDY]

How do I write in a language other than English? For example, Chinese?

[mrxz]

The built-in text component and <a-text> primitive uses so-called (M)SDF fonts. These need to be generated with all the characters you plan to use. The default font only supports ASCII characters, so for characters from other writing systems, you'll have to generate your own font. See the following documentation page for details: https://aframe.io/docs/1.6.0/components/text.html#non-ascii-characters

Alternatively you can use the aframe-troika-text library. It uses Troika's text renderer under the hood, which can generate the font on the fly.

[dmarcos]

Should troika be A-Frame default?

[arpu]

maybe something like https://github.com/foxglove/three-text with @mapbox/tiny-sdf could be a first step

[mrxz]

For my own projects I exclusively use Troika, mostly out of convenience but also because it builds nicely on top of the Three.js material system. I think making it the default in A-Frame isn't a bad idea, I'll try and experiment with it and create a PR.

[dmarcos]

What are the downsides from switching to Troika?

[arpu]

The only downside i can think of, is if aframe switching to WebGPURenderer (webgl2, webgpu) with TLS more glsl shader code needs to port to TSL, but what i read @lojjic have plans to support TLS ( correct me if i am wrong)

[lojjic]

Yes TSL support is planned, but no concrete timeframe yet. It would bump up in priority if there were a significant number of people or projects asking for it. 😅

[lojjic]

The other downside I can think of is that it's asynchronous, and runs in a worker by default. That could complicate things that expect to be able to use metrics of the text in a synchronous way -- e.g. scaling a background plane to match the text dimensions.

[koktavy]

I hadn't even considered TSL in A-Frame, but that integration would encourage me to learn TSL and give me better grounds to advocate for it in the office.

[polytropoi]

I'd love to see troika as default (I'm all in on it), so it gets tested with aframe changes - I noticed that the troika aframe component does not work and throws this error on the aframe master branch:

troika-three-utils.esm.js:22 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'replace')
at b (troika-three-utils.esm.js:22:17)

see https://glitch.com/edit/#!/gusty-childlike-durian

@lojjic I was going to post this as an issue on your github, but wasn't sure about the propriety of posting bugs that only appear on the master branch...