alexpgp: (Computing)
[personal profile] alexpgp
...something in Windows XP got smarter, as far as fonts are concerned.

Some years ago, I sat down with a copy of Borland C++ and created a Windows application that allowed me to rapidly search through text-based glossaries where each term occupied one line. Although the application was not sophisticated enough to decline (or "undecline") Russian words the way Multitran can, its ability to accept several strings in a query and return all terms that contained all of the strings is still something I like using.

However, at the time I wrote the app, characters on personal computers were strictly 8-bit items, with Unicode (and UTF-8) just starting to peek over the horizon. As Windows moved toward multiple-byte characters, I noticed that pasting a string that had been cut from a document or a browser into my application resulted in pasting a series of question marks, as the OS was not capable of figuring out how to stuff two-byte characters into a field that expected one-byte characters.

Well, just a few minutes ago, I accidentally discovered that the OS that came with my new VAIO is able to figure out that trick, and that pasting a string into my app's query list box works just fine.

Call it progress.

Cheers...

UPDATE: Okay, so it turns out this was the result of having fiddled with settings. Still, I'm happy.

Date: 2006-08-16 09:07 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] maykov.livejournal.com
control panel->regional and language options->Advanced->Language for non-Unicode programs, set to Russian.

Better yet, recompile your program in Unicode.

Date: 2006-08-16 09:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] alexpgp.livejournal.com
Aha! I remember setting that, which was something I hadn't done before. I forget why I did it... I think to solve a font problem with another program.

As far as recompiling, I'd have to somehow get my hands on the Borland library source code and make appropriate changes there. It's funny, though, that both the C++ product and later, Delphi, never did get with the program and support multiple-byte characters (or if they did, it was past the point where I was interested in doing any more development).

Thanks for the reminder.

Cheers...

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