Question about data entry in German or French in VCL controls

Ram Mulay

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Feb 14, 2006, 2:19:12 PM2/14/06

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We use Delphi 2006 and have a VCL/Win32 application that we would like to
enhance to support German & French data entry.

I know that VCL controls do not support Unicode. But they do seem to support
the entry of Basic Latin and Latin1 type charcter sets. But not Latin
Extended-A and Latin Extended-B. My questions are:

1. What character sets do the German and French languages use? Do they use
Basic Latin and Latin1? Or do they use other character sets? I am referring
to characters sets as shown in Wicrosoft Word under the Insert Symbol
dialog.
2. Do I need unicode support for enabling German or French in our VCL
application? If so, why?

Thanks,
Ram

Bernhard Geyer

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Feb 15, 2006, 4:43:59 AM2/15/06

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> 1. What character sets do the German and French languages use? Do
they use
> Basic Latin and Latin1? Or do they use other character sets? I am referring
> to characters sets as shown in Wicrosoft Word under the Insert Symbol
> dialog.

Basic Latin + Latin1-Supplement

> 2. Do I need unicode support for enabling German or French in our VCL
> application? If so, why?

No. Not for DE/FR. But for many other european countries its very
usefull to use Unicode.

Ram Mulay

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Feb 15, 2006, 10:41:12 AM2/15/06

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Thanks...can you clarify that when you say 'other european countries ', you
are talking about Eastern European countries? Western European countries
should be covered pretty well by ISO 8859-1 (Latin1) is what I have learnt
from articles on the web.

"Bernhard Geyer" <Bernhar...@nospam.de> wrote in message
news:43f2f622$1...@newsgroups.borland.com...

Bernhard Geyer

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Feb 15, 2006, 12:09:07 PM2/15/06

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Ram Mulay schrieb:

> Thanks...can you clarify that when you say 'other european countries ', you
> are talking about Eastern European countries? Western European countries
> should be covered pretty well by ISO 8859-1 (Latin1) is what I have learnt
> from articles on the web.

Some western european uses some "special characters" from "Latin
Extended-A".

Ram Mulay

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Feb 15, 2006, 1:57:47 PM2/15/06

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I have come across these characters that are missing in Latin1...are there
more that could cause a concern? Basically what I need to know is that will
we be ok for the short term not to go to vcl.net for just the western
european contries? I understand that getting to unicode will be the total
solution but because of 3rd party controls (orpheus) in our code, going to
vcl.net will not be very straightforward for us. Thanks.

Excerpt from article...
The lack of the ligatures Dutch IJ, French OE and ,,German`` quotation marks
is considered tolerable. The lack of the new C=-resembling Euro currency
symbol U+20AC has opened the discussion of a new Latin0.

"Bernhard Geyer" <Bernhar...@nospam.de> wrote in message

news:43f35e74$1...@newsgroups.borland.com...

Bernhard Geyer

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Feb 16, 2006, 4:35:37 AM2/16/06

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The €-Symbol isn't a problem on modern Windows-Version because it is
"linked" to a lower space for ANSI-Application and replaces a nealy
unused character.

Ram Mulay schrieb: