Problem with Polish chars
Tomek Kuchta
I am writing an application under BCB C++ 6.0 and Windows XP (Polish
language edition) using Polish-language specific chars.
Unfortunately, it appeared, that when the app has been tested under
Windows 98, Polish letters were not showing correctly.
I tried to simulate this situation under XP, and it appeared, that when
I changed the language for applications don't using unicode from Polish
to English, not all of letters were displayed correctly.
Could you possibly give me a hint what should I do to make my
application working with Polish signs independently to OS language
settings? The final OS is Windows 98.
Thank you for reply
Tomek Kuchta
Igor Siticov
It is impossible without use of Unicode controls. Delphi/C++Builder
applications are non-Unicode applications and use default system code page
to convert non-English characters. When OS's default code page is set to
non-Polish the Polish chars will be converted incorrectly.
--
Best regards.
TsiLang Components Suite - Best Globalization Tool 2004
http://www.tsilang.com
"Tomek Kuchta" <tomcz...@wp.pl> wrote in message
news:4539...@newsgroups.borland.com...
Tomek Kuchta
Is there a way to switch the code page only for the application within
the code?
Is there some other way to setup language settings inside the source code?
When I change character mapping to English, and run my application, the
language icon changes from EN to PL. It looks like it is forcing the
system to be seen as a Polish language application.
Thank you in advance,
best regards
Tomek
Igor Siticov
> Thank you very much.
> Is there a way to switch the code page only for the application within
> the code?
You can try SetThreadLocale() but this won't work in all cases.
> Is there some other way to setup language settings inside the source code?
Btw, do you handle Charset settings for Polish language? If you run your
application on Windows which supports Polish and still get garbage
characters it could be you didn't set the appropriate charset for these
controls. Btw, some (or most) controls will use default locale (Language for
non-Unicode programs) settings and will ignore the Charset.
> When I change character mapping to English, and run my application, the
> language icon changes from EN to PL. It looks like it is forcing the
> system to be seen as a Polish language application.
Could you please elaborate this?
Tomek Kuchta
> Btw, do you handle Charset settings for Polish language?
I have been using default charset. There is also a charset named "East
Europe", but I wasn't sure if it supports Polish.
Unfortunately, polish chars in my application don't appear only on
controls. They are also used in dialog boxes and .rtf files that I load
into TRichEdit control.
> Could you please elaborate this?
I tried to change everything possible to switch to English in system's
settings and consequently emulate app's behavior on Windows 98. Icon
showing on a language toolbar indicated 'EN'. However, when I started my
app, the icon switched to 'PL', as if Polish language of the app was
detected. It looked like my application was seen as one with polish
characters by the system, nevertheless characters were incorrectly
interpreted.
Thank you for reply,
best regards
Tomek Kuchta
Igor Siticov
>
> I have been using default charset. There is also a charset named "East
> Europe", but I wasn't sure if it supports Polish.
You for sure must set this to East Europe because under English locale the
default charset will map to English and won't be able to display Polish
chars.
> Unfortunately, polish chars in my application don't appear only on
> controls. They are also used in dialog boxes and .rtf files that I load
> into TRichEdit control.
You won't be able to see them unless your Win98 OS support them.
>
> > Could you please elaborate this?
>
> I tried to change everything possible to switch to English in system's
> settings and consequently emulate app's behavior on Windows 98. Icon
> showing on a language toolbar indicated 'EN'. However, when I started my
> app, the icon switched to 'PL', as if Polish language of the app was
> detected. It looked like my application was seen as one with polish
> characters by the system, nevertheless characters were incorrectly
> interpreted.
It looks like Version Info resource of your project includes only entry for
Polish locale. You can check this in Project Options.
Tomek Kuchta
I will try to change the locale.
I have also thought about idea of changing character encoding of source
code files to Unicode or ISO-8856-2 (under Linux) to eliminate problems
with those strings, that are declared inside the code (for example
strings showing on dialog boxes). Do you think that it could partially
solve the problem?
Best regards,
Tomek Kuchta
Roland Seidel
I'm developing in English (basic locale) using BCB6 and BDS C++2006 for
a client who asked specifically about Polish and Korean. I can't offer
much help in sorting out your code but here's what I did.
There are several problems - display, input, load, save. Display and
input are both managed by letting the user select the font (including
charset - East European for Polish) that will be used for all controls
and display elements.
In a central class (TMainLib) I have
TFont* SystemFont; // font for holding charset for edit fields etc.
and on a preferences dialog I let them change that to anything they want.
FontDialog->Font = MainLib->SystemFont;
FontDialog->Execute();
MainLib->SystemFont->Assign(FontDialog->Font);
[Note that you have to use ->Assign() for a TFont*]
DISPLAY, INPUT-----------------------
Then everytime a dialog opens I assign that font to any controls that
might display or input language specific text
edit->Font = MainLib->SystemFont;
label->Font = MainLib->SystemFont;
That covered display. For input I had to install other language options
in Control Panel | Regional and Language | Language tab including
setting extra keyboards in Input Langages | Details. After doing that I
could select the Polish keyboard (EN/PO bottom left near the systray)
and use Alt-a to get the ogenek into a control as long as it had East
European charset. Sending Text to a TCanvas is handled the same way -
set the Canvas->Font=SystemFont before calling TextOut etc.
SAVE, LOAD ---------------------------
File save and load seemed to be handled ok by ANSI. I retrieve the text
from the control in the normal way (edit->Text) and write it to ANSI
files. When I load it it still looks Polish - but if I change charset to
Cyrillic it looks Russian.
This is ok if you have only one language you want to accommodate. But if
you want to see Polish and Korean in the same program you can juggle
lots of different fonts for different TextOut calls or different
controls but it is not satisfactory. For that you need Unicode, although
you do not need to go all the way to defining _UNICODE and there is one
very good reason why you would not (see later).
UNICODE, TNT -----------------------------------
VCL does not handle Unicode, it might in the future but for now you have
to use a third party set of controls but they are extremely good and
free. http://www.tntware.com/delphicontrols/unicode/ Download the
installation program - it does a great job putting it into your
compilers. Replace every control with its Tnt equivalent (TEdit becomes
TTntEdit) and start using wide chars for all your text handling.
WIDE CODE ----------------------------
You don't need to define _UNICODE to use wide string functions. Use
WideStrings instead of AnsiStrings, wchar_t* instead of char*, wcslen()
instead of strlen(), etc.
It's a big conversion job and I started off using the switchable version
like _TCHAR and _tcslen() but I don't like it. That meant defining
_UNICODE to get the wide versions and that caused a problem. I want to
use COM/ATL and there is a bug in Borland's code that makes it
impossible to add a COM object with _UNICODE defined (see the exchange
in the ActiveX forum on Unicode and COM/ATL).
DISPLAY, INPUT -----------------------------------
The Tnt controls take care of the display - as long as you read/write to
them with WideString or wchar_t*. Input still depends on selecting
language and keyboard and having the right charset available in the
control. Writing text to a canvas has to be done differently. Instead of
Canvas->TextOut(x,y,"something")
you use
WideCanvasTextOut(Canvas,x,y,"something");
There are Tnt replacements for all the canvas functions. I had to look
in ProgramFiles/TntWare/DelphiUnicodeControls/Source/Graphics.hpp to
find them - there's no online help for the Tnt controls.
FILE SAVE/LOAD, UTF8 ------------------------------
There's lots of ways to do file access, I use TFileStreams and you can
replace these with TTntFileStreams (in TntClasses.hpp).
Open a file for writing (note the L before the name - long string)
TTntFileStream* fs = new TTntFileStream(L"test.txt", fmCreate);
You can write ANSI files just like you used to
char* tx = "something";
fs->Write(tx, strlen(tx));
You can write Unicode files (note the *2 in the size param because it is
still a byte stream and wchar_t has double the bytes - your files will
be twice as big)
wchar_t* wx = L"something";
fs->Write(wx, wcslen(tx)*2);
Or you can have the best of both worlds and write UTF8. This is single
byte and looks identical to ANSI if you have no characters outside the
basic code page and uses multibytes for others.
WideString ws = L"something";
AnsiString as = UTF8Encode(ws);
fs->Write(as.c_str(), as.Length());
You can read ANSI
TTntFileStream* fs = new TTntFileStream(L"test.txt", fmOpenRead);
char buf[100];
fs->Read(buf,100);
You can read Unicode
wchar_t buf[100];
fs->Read(buf,200); // note - 200 bytes for 100 wide chars
You can read UTF8
char buf[100];
fs->Read(buf,100);
WideString ws = UTF8Decode(buf);
BYTE ORDER MARKS ---------------------------------
You might have to concern yourself with byte order marks - special chars
at the start of a file indicating if it is ANSI, UTF8 or Unicode. These
are optional but you might run into them.
Unicode files might start with two bytes FF FE
UTF8 files might start with three bytes EE BB BF
ANSI files never have special chars at the start.
Hope some of that was helpful
Roland
Igor Siticov
strings they won't be displayed correctly if you use standard (non-Unicode)
controls unless your default locale will be Polish. Because it will still
use conversion from Unicode to Ansi to display.
--
Best regards.
TsiLang Components Suite - Best Globalization Tool 2004
http://www.tsilang.com
"Tomek Kuchta" <tomcz...@wp.pl> wrote in message
news:453e51da$1...@newsgroups.borland.com...
Tomek Kuchta
I will try to make use of those helpful advices in my app.
Best regards,
Tomek Kuchta