PureBasic Forums - English

Hi, Firstly thanks Fred & the team for the PB4 update - as a new user I was looking forward to it, especially the unicode support. So I'd like to ask perhaps a really dumb (potentially embarrassing) question here.. I'd like to use it for storing/using Japanese as unicode strings. I tried the following simple example: a.s contained a Japanese string. The IDE seems to not support unicode or at least when I enter Japanese, it appears as garbled chars and when I run it, the message box also has garbled strings. So I created the same source using notepad saving as unicode & tried to open it in the editor, but PB wanted to open the file as a hex doc. Ideally it would be great if the IDE would support unicode as well as the compiler, or maybe it does - I'm simply missing something?

So essentially the question is how can I use unicode in PB4? Do I still need to use the ANSI to unicode conversion routines I've seen on this board before?

Thanks.

According to the PureBasic Survival Guide ( http://www.xs4all.nl/~bluez/datatalk/purebasic.htm ):

If you want to enter Unicode characters in the editor, you have to switch this option on! File / Preferences / Editor / Use UTF8.

Thanks very much for that. Is the messagerequester() unicode aware also?

> Is the messagerequester() unicode aware also?

Should be if you go to Compiler menu -> Compiler Options -> Tick: Create Unicode Executable.

PB - you're the man! Thanks very much for your kind help. That worked a treat.

Added the editor question to the FAQ.

Another tip:

If you want to debug unicode strings, it is better to use the standalone
debugger (Preferences / Debugger / Select it in the combobox on top),
because the standalone one has a full unicode version, the one in the IDE
must convert to ascii before displaying. (this will change. dunno when though.)

Hmm it seems that PBs Standard Font isn't a Unicode one an so onlöy understands a minority, changing to a Unicoe font helps, but you should consider to take a Unicode Font as standrad when available, it's also astonishing that my System Font (Windows XP German) doesn't support many Unicode characters either.

We use the standard unicode font, what unicode characters have you tested ? If you want to test japanese, you will have to install the IME Japanese for XP.