DN471743458

Subject: Re: Tcl8.1b3 Unicode question. - DN [1]

Scott Stanton <scott.stanton@Scriptics.com> - 27 Apr 1999 - comp.lang.tcl

 Albert Chen wrote:
 >
 > Hi,
 >
 > I downloaded Tcl8.1b3 to test Chinese words(Big5), I encountered the
 > problem, see:
 >
 > %encoding system big5
 > %puts "жие\"
 >
 > after executing the command puts, it can't successfully print the
 > Chinese word жие\.
 > Would anyone tell me how to do with unicode on Tcl, thanks.
 >
 > -Albert.

 Be careful about using the "encoding system" command.  What this command does
 is to control the encoding used when communicating with system calls.  If it
 doesn't match the actual encoding used by your system, then you will have all
 sorts of problems (a common manifestation is the inability to open any files).
 The main reason you would need to use this is if Tcl can't figure out the
 proper encoding from your env(LANG) or env(LC_CTYPE) values.  In any case, be
 very careful with this command as it can leave you with a non-functional
 interpreter.

 If you are trying to control the encoding used to read or write to a channel,
 then you should use the "fconfigure $file -encoding" command instead.  This
 allows you to control the encoding on a channel-by-channel basis.  This is
 almost always the correct command to use, rather than "encoding system".

 Once you have your data in Tcl correctly with the right Unicode character
 values, then Tk should automatically map from Unicode to the encoding used by
 your X fonts.  At this point it should be a matter of selecting a font that is
 capable of displaying your characters and letting Tk handle the encoding
 translations.

 ___________________________________________________________
 Scott Stanton            650-210-0105 tel
 Sr. Software Engineer        650-210-0101 fax
 Scriptics Corporation        scott.stanton@scriptics.com
 The Tcl Platform Company    http://www.scriptics.com