Using Japanese characters in WPF/XAML

Question

I want to display Japanese chars in my WPF application:

<Window x:Class="WpfApplication1.Window1"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    Height="300" Width="300">
    <Grid>
        <TextBlock Text="はい" FontSize="30" />
    </Grid>
</Window>

When I run this app on Windows XP the characters are not shown. Only two squares are shown. On Vista they are shown correctly.

Since Visual Studio is able to show them, it should be possible in my app. I should probably change the default font of my application? What font do I need?

Note: I definitely do not want to install additional packages or fonts to get this running! I just want to use the same method as Visual Studio does.

Answer 1

It is a problem with the font. Windows XP got shipped in non-Asian countries with fonts that only contain glyphs that were in common use in those countries. That mattered 9 years ago, XP had to run on machines with very limited resources. If a requested glyph is missing from a font, Windows replaces it with a square.

Short from installing fonts that support Asian language (Control Panel + Regional and Language options), this is not going to be a problem when somebody that runs a Japanese version of Windows looks at your UI. She'll have the right fonts installed.