Hi SketchUp Team and Community,
I am writing to strongly request native support for the Khmer language (and other complex scripts) within the native 3D Text tool.
Currently, when we type or paste Khmer Unicode into the 3D Text dialog, the text shaping completely breaks. Because Khmer relies on a complex text layout (CTL) with subscripts, superscripts, and specific character positioning, the current engine fails to combine the glyphs correctly. This results in disconnected characters, missing legs/vowels, or unreadable boxes.
This core limitation significantly disrupts architectural design workflows. To simply create 3D Khmer text for building signage, exterior elevations, or floor plans, we are forced to rely on tedious workarounds—such as typing the text in Adobe Illustrator, creating vector outlines, exporting to .DWG/.DXF, and finally importing it back into SketchUp.
Furthermore, when developing custom Ruby plugins to automate rendering or modeling workflows, the inability of the SketchUp API to natively parse and generate complex text shapes creates a major bottleneck for localizing tools and generating automated 3D annotations.
Updating the core text-shaping engine (perhaps by integrating a robust shaping engine like HarfBuzz) to fully support complex scripts would be a massive time-saver for designers, architects, and plugin developers.
Thank you for considering this vital update!