Wine 5.4 is out improving Direct2D, Unicode 13 and a real old D3DX9 issue is solved

The Wine hackers have released the latest development build this week, with Wine 5.4 now available. Here's the highlights:

• Unicode data updated to Unicode version 13.
• Builtin programs use the new UCRTBase C runtime.
• More correct support for Internationalized Domain Names.
• Support for painting rounded rectangles in Direct2D.
• Text drawing in D3DX9

That last one is interesting, as it checks off a bug that was opened back in 2010, with many games having no text rendering. However, it might not be perfected across all games yet as the commit mentions how it's only a "very basic ID3DXFont_DrawText implementation". The commit itself, from a CodeWeavers staffer, is also based upon code provided years ago by someone else. Every little helps though of course.

Over 30 more bugs were marked as solved this release, although the usual applies: some were actually fixed in previous Wine releases, only now being noticed. Bug fixes include issues solved for: NieR: Automata, Divinity Original Sin 2, Final Fantasy V and plenty more too including a few bugs that affected numerous games and applications.

You can see the release notes for Wine 5.4 here.