Unicode text

Normal 8-bit ASCII strings can only represent 256 different characters - not enough for logographic or syllabic alphabets such as Chinese Han, Japanese Kana, or Egypt Hieroglyphs. For overcoming the 256-character limit, the Unicode standard was defined with 16-bit strings, representing 65536 different characters. The latest version of Unicode consists of a repertoire of even more than 107,000 characters using different font sets, and supports bidirectional reading order for the correct display of right-to-left writing systems such as Arabic or Hebrew. From version A7.84 on, the engine supports TEXT objects both with ASCII strings and with Unicode TTF strings.

Generating Unicode text

Edit the desired text in an editor that supports Unicode, f.i. Windows Notepad® or Microsoft Word®, using an Unicode font like "Arial Unicode MS". Put any string on a different line.

أشهد أن لا إله إلاَّ الله و أشهد أن محمد رسول الله

Οὐκ ἔστιν θεὸς εἰ μὴ ὁ θεὸς μόνος· Μααμὲτ ἀπόστολος θεοῦ

Save the file in a Unicode text format into the work folder. With Word: Save As ("Speichern Unter"), File Type: Text ("Dateityp: Nur Text"), Coding: Unicode ("Andere Codierung: Unicode"). The file is now saved as plain text with 16-bit characters.
Read the 16-bit text file into a TEXT object with the txt_loadw function, or into a STRING with the file_str_readtow function.
Set the TEXT font to a Unicode TTF font. Display the TEXT with the SHOW flag or with draw_obj.

Remarks

The text flag REVERSE enables right-to-left reading order, for displaying text with a Hebrew or Arabic font that does not automatically reverse the text.
A7 Some string functions support Unicode strings: str_cpy, str_len, str_cat, str_cmp, str_cmpi, str_cmpni. In A8 all string functions support Unicode strings.
Unicode is only supported for TrueType fonts, not for bitmap fonts. We don't think that you want to paint a 65536 characters bitmap.
The Unicode implementation was sponsored by FH JOANNEUM Gesellschaft, Graz / Austria.

Example:

// display a unicode text
function main() 
{
  TEXT* textUnicode = txt_create(10,0);
  textUnicode.font = font_create("Arial Unicode MS#30");
  txt_loadw(textUnicode,"Unicode.txt");
  set(textUnicode,SHOW);
}

Unicode text

Generating Unicode text

Remarks

Example:

See also: