Re: utf-8 support for Tkx ActiveStatePerl (5.8.8) under Windows Vista

[Gisle Aas]

On May 23, 2008, at 06:54, Jeff Hobbs wrote:

Hi Greg,
Greg Eck wrote:
I am looking for a critical answer in a design issue.
I want to use the Tkx subset to program a gui, but need to verify  
that Tkx will indeed display my foreign characters (Mongolian,  
Tibetan, Chinese).

Tkx (via Tcl/Tk) can properly display all unicode chars in the BMP  
(basic multilingual plane).

I can see the good utf8 characters being processed in output, but  
not as displayed in the listbox.
Could you verify that this is true or false, bug or deficiency,  
maybe my lack of knowing the correct syntax?
 If you could tell me what I need to do in this code snippet to  
display the $v variable, then I will go ahead and press ahead.  If  
you view the file with Arial Unicode MS or some other pan-Unicode  
font, you should be able to see the $v variable fine.

I've attached a modified version that adds one more line that does  
display correctly.  Note I use direct unicode code points.  I'm not  
sure whether it is the utf8() or the special marker starting your  
file that is throwing off the translation.  In any case, this shows  
that it is possible and one way to do it.

Don't use Unicode::String as it will give you encoded utf8, which is  
not what Tkx wants.  Just use plan perl strings and it ought to just  
work.  If your source code is UTF-8 you should make it start with the  
BOM marker, or you can add a 'use utf8' statement early to tell this  
to perl.

But even after doing this I still see some Chinese(?) letters in the  
listbox, not the Cyrillic I expected.

--Gisle


Jeff
use Unicode::String qw(utf8 latin1 utf16be);
use Tkx;
use warnings;

my $mw = Tkx::widget->new(".");
$mw->g_wm_title("GreySon");
$mw->g_wm_minsize(300,200);
$u = utf8("hello1");
$v = utf8("жишээ");
$w = utf8("hello3");
$x = "\x{0436}\x{0438}\x{0448}\x{044d}\x{044d}";
print "$u $v $x howdy ... \n";

my $message = "The $v hen lives in a chicken coop.";
print $message . "\n";
my @colors = ($u, $v, $w, $x);

my $label = $mw->new_label(-textvariable => \$message);
my $enter = $mw->new_label(-text => "Select correct word");
my $lb = $mw->new_listbox(-selectmode => "single");
$lb->insert("end", @colors);
my $show = $mw->new_button(-text => "Show selection", -command =>  
\&display);
my $exit = $mw->new_button(-text => "Exit", -command => sub {exit});

$label->g_pack;
$enter->g_pack;
$lb->g_pack;
$show->g_pack;
$exit->g_pack;

Tkx::MainLoop();

Tkx::bind($mw, "<<Copy>>", sub { $lb->get($lb->curselection); });

sub display {
    my @selections = $lb->curselection;
    $message = "You selected: ";
    foreach (@selections) {$message .= $lb->get($_);}
}

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