Let nCurses handle UTF8 character by terminal - c

Ncurses have whole family of print functions for wide characters: https://linux.die.net/man/3/mvwaddnwstr
The problem with those is that it depends glibc, so if some UTF-8 character were yet not added to glibc those won't be printed properly example is: ✅
The solution I can see is to let ncurses handle displaying the character by "terminal", what I mean by that is that if we would have some sort of print function that would accept hex UTF-8 string and let terminal find correct font like below snippet do:
#include <iostream>
#include <unistd.h>
int main()
{
write(1, "\xe2\x9c\x85", 9);
}
Is is possible with nCurses?

Related

Defining _POSIX_C_SOURCE as 2 causes error when changing code page on Windows CMD with MinGW GCC

I've been writing a Linux program that's meant to write non-English characters on the terminal, I've recently been porting it to Windows, and I've run into some issues, when trying to change the code page and the font of the terminal, having the symbolic constant _POSIX_C_SOURCE previously defined seems to change the behavior of the code, and makes it incapable of properly printing non-English characters, for reference, this is my code.
#include <windows.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
SetConsoleCP(CP_UTF8)
SetConsoleOutputCP(CP_UTF8)
HANDLE hStdOut = GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);
CONSOLE_FONT_INFOEX cfie;
ZeroMemory(&cfie, sizeof(cfie));
cfie.cbSize = sizeof(cfie);
lstrcpyW(cfie.FaceName, L"Lucida Console");
SetCurrentConsoleFontEx(hStdOut, 0, &cfie);
printf("Ћирилични текст\n");
return 0;
}
This is what the program prints out depending on whether I do or don't define the constant in a command line argument while compiling.
C:\Users\User\Desktop>gcc test.c
C:\Users\User\Desktop>a.exe
Ћириличан текст
C:\Users\User\Desktop>gcc -D_POSIX_C_SOURCE=2 test.c
C:\Users\User\Desktop>a.exe
������������������ ����������
This is because outputting to standard output is done literally byte-by-byte when POSIX compliance is in effect. It uses a different implementation of what is done inside the printf function.

Write Unicode with write() function

I am doing an exercise where I need to write Unicode on the terminal,
using only write() in <unistd.h>.
I can't use :
putchar
setlocale
printf (in fact the exercise is reproducing printf function)
Any "low level" advice on how to perform that?
As Chris wrote in the comments, you need a terminal (e.g. like xterm on Linux) that understands the Unicode and then you just write them. So by default xterm understands UTF8 and is set to a codepage such that this code will give you a UTF8 Smiley Face (☺).
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
char happy[] = { 0xe2, 0x98, 0xba }; /* U+263A */
int main()
{
write(1, happy, 3);
return 0;
}

Linux, field_buffer does not provide a UTF-8 string

In a C program for Linux, with ncursesw and form, I need to read the string stored in a field, with support for UTF-8 characters. When ASCII only is used, it is pretty simple, because the string is stored as an array of char:
char *dest;
...
dest = field_buffer(field[0], 0);
If I try to type a UTF-8 and non-ASCII character in the field with this code the character does not appear and it is not handled. In this answer for UTF-8 it is suggested to use ncursesw. But with the following code (written following this guide)
#define _XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED
#include <ncursesw/form.h>
#include <locale.h>
int main()
{
...
setlocale(LC_ALL, "");
...
initscr();
wchar_t *dest;
...
dest = field_buffer(field[0], 0);
}
the compiler produces an error:
warning: assignment from incompatible pointer type [enabled by default]
dest = field_buffer(field[0], 0);
^
How to obtain from the field an array of wchar_t?
ncursesw uses get_wch instead of getch, so which function does it use instead of field_buffer()? I couldn't find it by googling.
The program is compiled in a system with the following locale:
$ locale
LANG=it_IT.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="it_IT.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="it_IT.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="it_IT.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="it_IT.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="it_IT.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="it_IT.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="it_IT.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="it_IT.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="it_IT.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="it_IT.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="it_IT.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="it_IT.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=
It supports and uses UTF-8 as a default. With a locale like this, when the ncursesw environment is used, the C program should be able to save UTF-8 characters into a char array.
In order to correctly set up ncursesw it is very important to follow all the steps of the mentioned guide. In particular, the program should have the header
#define _XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED
#include <ncursesw/form.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <locale.h>
The program should be compiled as
gcc -o executable_file source_file.c -lncursesw -lformw
and the program should contain
setlocale(LC_ALL, "");
before initscr();. With all these conditions satisfied, the string can be saved into a normal char array, as if ncurses and ASCII were used instead of ncursesw and UTF-8. As specified by John Bollinger in the comments, the function field_buffer can only return a char * and so it is unuseful to use any other data type such as wchar_t.

The wcscoll function, is marked as poisoned, what do I do?

On Mac Os X 10.6.8 I can't compile code using wchar_t functions from the standard library until I have resolved this.
The wcscoll function, together with a bunch of others:
inttypes.h:#pragma GCC poison wcstoimax wcstoumax
stdlib.h:#pragma GCC poison mbstowcs mbtowc wcstombs wctomb
wchar.h:#pragma GCC poison fgetws fputwc fputws fwprintf fwscanf mbrtowc mbsnrtowcs >mbsrtowcs putwc putwchar swprintf swscanf vfwprintf vfwscanf vswprintf vswscanf vwprintf >vwscanf wcrtomb wcscat wcschr wcscmp wcscoll wcscpy wcscspn wcsftime wcsftime wcslcat >wcslcpy wcslen wcsncat wcsncmp wcsncpy wcsnrtombs wcspbrk wcsrchr wcsrtombs wcsspn wcsstr >wcstod wcstof wcstok wcstol wcstold wcstoll wcstoul wcstoull wcswidth wcsxfrm wcwidth >wmemchr wmemcmp wmemcpy wmemmove wmemset wprintf wscanf
#include <stdio.h>
#include <wchar.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <locale.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
extern int errno;
int main(void)
{
wchar_t pwcs1[3]={L"ØL"}, pwcs2[3]={L"Ål"};
size_t n;
(void)setlocale(LC_ALL, "");
/* set it to zero for checking errors on wcscoll */
errno = 0;
/*
** Let pwcs1 and pwcs2 be two wide character strings to
** compare.
*/
/* n = wcscmp(pwcs1, pwcs2); */
n = wcscoll(pwcs1, pwcs2);
/*
** If errno is set then it indicates some
** collation error.
*/
if (n < 0 ) {
printf("%s\n","Øl mindre en Ål" );
} else if (n == 0) {
printf("%s\n","Øl lik Ål" );
} else {
printf("%s\n","Øl større en Ål" );
}
if(errno != 0){
/* error has occurred... handle error ...*/
}
}
How do I resolve this?
I am a little bit reluctant to mess with the standard library. But I guess I maybe can compile the GNU C library, if Apple hasn't a fix for it? Or is there any other suitable alternatives amongst libraries for handling wide characters (Utf-8).
I am porting something ancient, so I really need to use ncurses, and in order to use ncurses, I need wide characters! :)
Edit: The standard includepath should, as I have understood it be /usr/include. I have been through the include directories of the SDK's I have, and a grep through the header files there reveals the same poison pragma's, as did the latest tarball from http://opensource.apple.com/tarballs/Libc/
Edit++
Hindsightly, those pragmas are there for a reason, and I was looking for alternatives, so right now, I am trying to build glibc, just downloaded, and I have inspected the headers, which are without any "GCC poison" pragmas.
Having read up a little bit, in the configure file of glibc, I guess that isn't an easy option. I guess I'll have to dissect something that works with utf-8 and uses ncurses on mac osX to figure out how.
It might be that I am just overlooking an easy solution. But ncurses falls back on 7-bit ascii, and that is my problem. My goal is to render utf-8 language specific characters, while using ncurses. I need to be able to sort since the format is "propritary" with indexing, forking out a system call to sort records is no option. I also need to be able to know how many codepoints that are in a string of some kind for field-editing, insertion and removal of characters from the display with ncurses.
Thanks!
So far it seems that the ICU library looks promising: I think I will pursue a solution with the ICU library, that as far as I know are shipped with Mac Os X. http://icu-project.org/apiref/icu4c/

Greek letters in Windows Concole

I'm writting a program in C and I want to have Greek characters in the menu when I run it in cmd.exe . Someone said that in order to include Greek characters you have to use a printf that goes something like this:
printf(charset:IS0-1089:uffe);
but they weren't sure.
Does anyone know how to do that?
Assuming Windows, you can:
set your console font to a Unicode TrueType font:
emit the data using an "ANSI" mechanism
This code prints γειά σου:
#include "windows.h"
int main() {
SetConsoleOutputCP(1253); //"ANSI" Greek
printf("\xE3\xE5\xE9\xDC \xF3\xEF\xF5");
return 0;
}
The hex codes represent γειά σου when encoded as windows-1253. If you use an editor that saves data as windows-1253, you can use literals instead. An alternative would be to use either OEM 737 (that really is a DOS encoding) or use Unicode.
I used SetConsoleOutputCP to set the console code page, but you could type the command chcp 1253 prior to running the program instead.
you can print a unicode char characters by using printf like this :
printf("\u0220\n");
this will print Ƞ
I think this might only work if your console supports Greek. Probably what you want to do is to map characters to the Greek, but using ASCII. For C# but same idea in C.
913 to 936 = upper case Greek letters
945 to 968 = lower case Greek letters
Read more at Suite101: Working with the Greek Alphabet and C#: How to Display ASCII Codes Correctly when Creating a C# Application | Suite101.com at this link.
One way to do this is to print a wide string. Unfortunately, Windows needs a bit of non-standard setup to make this work. This code does that setup inside #if blocks.
#include <locale.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <wchar.h>
/* This has been reported not to autodetect correctly on tdm-gcc. */
#ifndef MS_STDLIB_BUGS // Allow overriding the autodetection.
# if ( _WIN32 || _WIN64 )
# define MS_STDLIB_BUGS 1
# else
# define MS_STDLIB_BUGS 0
# endif
#endif
#if MS_STDLIB_BUGS
# include <io.h>
# include <fcntl.h>
#endif
void init_locale(void)
// Does magic so that wprintf() can work.
{
// Constant for fwide().
static const int wide_oriented = 1;
#if MS_STDLIB_BUGS
// Windows needs a little non-standard magic.
static const char locale_name[] = ".1200";
_setmode( _fileno(stdout), _O_WTEXT );
#else
// The correct locale name may vary by OS, e.g., "en_US.utf8".
static const char locale_name[] = "";
#endif
setlocale( LC_ALL, locale_name );
fwide( stdout, wide_oriented );
}
int main(void)
{
init_locale();
wprintf(L"μουσάων Ἑλικωνιάδων ἀρχώμεθ᾽\n");
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}
This has to be saved as UTF-8 with a BOM in order for older versions of Visual Studio to read it properly. Your console also has to be set to a monospaced Unicode font, such as Lucida Console, to display it properly. To mix wide strings in with ASCII strings, the standard defines the %ls and %lc format specifiers to printf(), although I’ve found these don’t work everywhere.
An alternative is to set the console to UTF-8 mode (On Windows, do this with chcp 65001.) and then print the UTF-8 string with printf(u8"μουσάων Ἑλικωνιάδων ἀρχώμεθ᾽\n");. UTF-8 is a second-class citizen on Windows, but that usually works. Try to run that without setting the code page first, though, and you will get garbage.

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