[wxWidgets.git] / docs / doxygen / overviews / fontencoding.h

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Name:        fontencoding
// Purpose:     topic overview
// Author:      wxWidgets team
// RCS-ID:      $Id$
// Licence:     wxWindows license
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

/*!
 
 @page fontencoding_overview Font encoding overview
 
 wxWidgets has support for multiple font encodings.
 By encoding we mean here the mapping between the character codes and the
 letters. Probably the most well-known encoding is (7 bit) ASCII one which is
 used almost universally now to represent the letters of the English alphabet
 and some other common characters. However, it is not enough to represent the
 letters of foreign alphabets and here other encodings come into play. Please
 note that we will only discuss 8-bit fonts here and not 
 #Unicode.
 Font encoding support is ensured by several classes: 
 #wxFont itself, but also 
 #wxFontEnumerator and 
 #wxFontMapper. wxFont encoding support is reflected by
 a (new) constructor parameter @e encoding which takes one of the following
 values (elements of enumeration type @c wxFontEncoding):
 
 
 
 
 
 
 wxFONTENCODING_SYSTEM
 
 
 
 
 The default encoding of the underlying
 operating system (notice that this might be a "foreign" encoding for foreign
 versions of Windows 9x/NT).
 
 
 
 
 
 wxFONTENCODING_DEFAULT
 
 
 
 
 The applications default encoding as
 returned by wxFont::GetDefaultEncoding. On
 program startup, the applications default encoding is the same as
 wxFONTENCODING_SYSTEM, but may be changed to make all the fonts created later
 to use it (by default).
 
 
 
 
 
 wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_1..15
 
 
 
 
 ISO8859 family encodings which are
 usually used by all non-Microsoft operating systems
 
 
 
 
 
 wxFONTENCODING_KOI8
 
 
 
 
 Standard Cyrillic encoding for the Internet
 (but see also wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_5 and wxFONTENCODING_CP1251)
 
 
 
 
 
 wxFONTENCODING_CP1250
 
 
 
 
 Microsoft analogue of ISO8859-2
 
 
 
 
 
 wxFONTENCODING_CP1251
 
 
 
 
 Microsoft analogue of ISO8859-5
 
 
 
 
 
 wxFONTENCODING_CP1252
 
 
 
 
 Microsoft analogue of ISO8859-1
 
 
 
 
 
 As you may see, Microsoft's encoding partly mirror the standard ISO8859 ones,
 but there are (minor) differences even between ISO8859-1 (Latin1, ISO encoding
 for Western Europe) and CP1251 (WinLatin1, standard code page for English
 versions of Windows) and there are more of them for other encodings.
 The situation is particularly complicated with Cyrillic encodings for which
 (more than) three incompatible encodings exist: KOI8 (the old standard, widely
 used on the Internet), ISO8859-5 (ISO standard for Cyrillic) and CP1251
 (WinCyrillic).
 This abundance of (incompatible) encodings should make it clear that using
 encodings is less easy than it might seem. The problems arise both from the
 fact that the standard encodings for the given language (say Russian, which is
 written in Cyrillic) are different on different platforms and because the
 fonts in the given encoding might just not be installed (this is especially a
 problem with Unix, or, in general, non-Win32 systems).
 To clarify, the #wxFontEnumerator 
 class may be used to enumerate both all available encodings and to find the
 facename(s) in which the given encoding exists. If you can find the font in
 the correct encoding with wxFontEnumerator then your troubles are over, but,
 unfortunately, sometimes this is not enough. For example, there is no standard
 way (that I know of, please tell me if you do!) to find a font on a Windows system
 for KOI8 encoding (only for WinCyrillic one which is quite different), so 
 #wxFontEnumerator will never return one, even if
 the user has installed a KOI8 font on his system.
 To solve this problem, a #wxFontMapper class is provided.
 This class stores the mapping between the encodings and the font face
 names which support them in #wxConfig object. Of
 course, it would be fairly useless if it tried to determine these mappings by
 itself, so, instead, it (optionally) asks the user and remembers his answers
 so that the next time the program will automatically choose the correct font.
 All these topics are illustrated by the @ref samplefont_overview;
 please refer to it and the documentation of the classes mentioned here for
 further explanations.
 
 */
Commit	Line	Data
15b6757b FM	1	/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
	2	// Name: fontencoding
	3	// Purpose: topic overview
	4	// Author: wxWidgets team
	5	// RCS-ID: $Id$
	6	// Licence: wxWindows license
	7	/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
	8
	9	/*!
	10
	11	@page fontencoding_overview Font encoding overview
	12
	13	wxWidgets has support for multiple font encodings.
	14	By encoding we mean here the mapping between the character codes and the
	15	letters. Probably the most well-known encoding is (7 bit) ASCII one which is
	16	used almost universally now to represent the letters of the English alphabet
	17	and some other common characters. However, it is not enough to represent the
	18	letters of foreign alphabets and here other encodings come into play. Please
	19	note that we will only discuss 8-bit fonts here and not
	20	#Unicode.
	21	Font encoding support is ensured by several classes:
	22	#wxFont itself, but also
	23	#wxFontEnumerator and
	24	#wxFontMapper. wxFont encoding support is reflected by
	25	a (new) constructor parameter @e encoding which takes one of the following
	26	values (elements of enumeration type @c wxFontEncoding):
	27
	28
	29
	30
	31
	32
	33	wxFONTENCODING_SYSTEM
	34
	35
	36
	37
	38	The default encoding of the underlying
	39	operating system (notice that this might be a "foreign" encoding for foreign
	40	versions of Windows 9x/NT).
	41
	42
	43
	44
	45
	46	wxFONTENCODING_DEFAULT
	47
	48
	49
	50
	51	The applications default encoding as
	52	returned by wxFont::GetDefaultEncoding. On
	53	program startup, the applications default encoding is the same as
	54	wxFONTENCODING_SYSTEM, but may be changed to make all the fonts created later
	55	to use it (by default).
	56
	57
	58
	59
	60
	61	wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_1..15
	62
	63
	64
65
66	ISO8859 family encodings which are
67	usually used by all non-Microsoft operating systems
68
69
70
71
72
73	wxFONTENCODING_KOI8
74
75
76
77
78	Standard Cyrillic encoding for the Internet
79	(but see also wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_5 and wxFONTENCODING_CP1251)
80
81
82
83
84
85	wxFONTENCODING_CP1250
86
87
88
89
90	Microsoft analogue of ISO8859-2
91
92
93
94
95
96	wxFONTENCODING_CP1251
97
98
99
100
101	Microsoft analogue of ISO8859-5
102
103
104
105
106
107	wxFONTENCODING_CP1252
108
109
110
111
112	Microsoft analogue of ISO8859-1
113
114
115
116
117
118	As you may see, Microsoft's encoding partly mirror the standard ISO8859 ones,
119	but there are (minor) differences even between ISO8859-1 (Latin1, ISO encoding
120	for Western Europe) and CP1251 (WinLatin1, standard code page for English
121	versions of Windows) and there are more of them for other encodings.
122	The situation is particularly complicated with Cyrillic encodings for which
123	(more than) three incompatible encodings exist: KOI8 (the old standard, widely
124	used on the Internet), ISO8859-5 (ISO standard for Cyrillic) and CP1251
125	(WinCyrillic).
126	This abundance of (incompatible) encodings should make it clear that using
127	encodings is less easy than it might seem. The problems arise both from the
128	fact that the standard encodings for the given language (say Russian, which is
129	written in Cyrillic) are different on different platforms and because the
130	fonts in the given encoding might just not be installed (this is especially a
131	problem with Unix, or, in general, non-Win32 systems).
132	To clarify, the #wxFontEnumerator
133	class may be used to enumerate both all available encodings and to find the
134	facename(s) in which the given encoding exists. If you can find the font in
135	the correct encoding with wxFontEnumerator then your troubles are over, but,
136	unfortunately, sometimes this is not enough. For example, there is no standard
137	way (that I know of, please tell me if you do!) to find a font on a Windows system
138	for KOI8 encoding (only for WinCyrillic one which is quite different), so
139	#wxFontEnumerator will never return one, even if
140	the user has installed a KOI8 font on his system.
141	To solve this problem, a #wxFontMapper class is provided.
142	This class stores the mapping between the encodings and the font face
143	names which support them in #wxConfig object. Of
144	course, it would be fairly useless if it tried to determine these mappings by
145	itself, so, instead, it (optionally) asks the user and remembers his answers
146	so that the next time the program will automatically choose the correct font.
147	All these topics are illustrated by the @ref samplefont_overview;
148	please refer to it and the documentation of the classes mentioned here for
149	further explanations.
150
151	*/
152
153