X-Git-Url: https://git.saurik.com/wxWidgets.git/blobdiff_plain/7fa3c420464f94c80f01d3044817c8b47ae9b033..fbfe2d4e7caa118e1b609151bc72e7e5c7ac0f32:/docs/doxygen/overviews/unicode.h?ds=sidebyside diff --git a/docs/doxygen/overviews/unicode.h b/docs/doxygen/overviews/unicode.h index 6d941f6c15..e9bc453939 100644 --- a/docs/doxygen/overviews/unicode.h +++ b/docs/doxygen/overviews/unicode.h @@ -1,211 +1,343 @@ ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// -// Name: unicode +// Name: unicode.h // Purpose: topic overview // Author: wxWidgets team // RCS-ID: $Id$ // Licence: wxWindows license ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// -/*! - - @page overview_unicode Unicode support in wxWidgets - - This section briefly describes the state of the Unicode support in wxWidgets. - Read it if you want to know more about how to write programs able to work with - characters from languages other than English. - - @li @ref overview_whatisunicode - @li @ref overview_unicodeandansi - @li @ref overview_unicodeinsidewxw - @li @ref overview_unicodeoutsidewxw - @li @ref overview_unicodesettings - @li @ref overview_topic8 - - - @section overview_whatisunicode What is Unicode? - - wxWidgets has support for compiling in Unicode mode - on the platforms which support it. Unicode is a standard for character - encoding which addresses the shortcomings of the previous, 8 bit standards, by - using at least 16 (and possibly 32) bits for encoding each character. This - allows to have at least 65536 characters (what is called the BMP, or basic - multilingual plane) and possible 2^32 of them instead of the usual 256 and - is sufficient to encode all of the world languages at once. More details about - Unicode may be found at #http://www.unicode.org. - - As this solution is obviously preferable to the previous ones (think of - incompatible encodings for the same language, locale chaos and so on), many - modern operating systems support it. The probably first example is Windows NT - which uses only Unicode internally since its very first version. - - Writing internationalized programs is much easier with Unicode and, as the - support for it improves, it should become more and more so. Moreover, in the - Windows NT/2000 case, even the program which uses only standard ASCII can profit - from using Unicode because they will work more efficiently - there will be no - need for the system to convert all strings the program uses to/from Unicode - each time a system call is made. - - @section overview_unicodeandansi Unicode and ANSI modes - - As not all platforms supported by wxWidgets support Unicode (fully) yet, in - many cases it is unwise to write a program which can only work in Unicode - environment. A better solution is to write programs in such way that they may - be compiled either in ANSI (traditional) mode or in the Unicode one. - - This can be achieved quite simply by using the means provided by wxWidgets. - Basically, there are only a few things to watch out for: - - - - Character type (@c char or @c wchar_t) - - Literal strings (i.e. @c "Hello, world!" or @c '*') - - String functions (@c strlen(), @c strcpy(), ...) - - Special preprocessor tokens (@c __FILE__, @c __DATE__ - and @c __TIME__) - - - Let's look at them in order. First of all, each character in an Unicode - program takes 2 bytes instead of usual one, so another type should be used to - store the characters (@c char only holds 1 byte usually). This type is - called @c wchar_t which stands for @e wide-character type. - - Also, the string and character constants should be encoded using wide - characters (@c wchar_t type) which typically take 2 or 4 bytes instead - of @c char which only takes one. This is achieved by using the standard C - (and C++) way: just put the letter @c 'L' after any string constant and it - becomes a @e long constant, i.e. a wide character one. To make things a bit - more readable, you are also allowed to prefix the constant with @c 'L' - instead of putting it after it. - - Of course, the usual standard C functions don't work with @c wchar_t - strings, so another set of functions exists which do the same thing but accept - @c wchar_t * instead of @c char *. For example, a function to get the - length of a wide-character string is called @c wcslen() (compare with - @c strlen() - you see that the only difference is that the "str" prefix - standing for "string" has been replaced with "wcs" standing for "wide-character - string"). - - And finally, the standard preprocessor tokens enumerated above expand to ANSI - strings but it is more likely that Unicode strings are wanted in the Unicode - build. wxWidgets provides the macros @c __TFILE__, @c __TDATE__ - and @c __TTIME__ which behave exactly as the standard ones except that - they produce ANSI strings in ANSI build and Unicode ones in the Unicode build. - - To summarize, here is a brief example of how a program which can be compiled - in both ANSI and Unicode modes could look like: - - @code - #ifdef __UNICODE__ - wchar_t wch = L'*'; - const wchar_t *ws = L"Hello, world!"; - int len = wcslen(ws); - - wprintf(L"Compiled at %s\n", __TDATE__); - #else // ANSI - char ch = '*'; - const char *s = "Hello, world!"; - int len = strlen(s); - - printf("Compiled at %s\n", __DATE__); - #endif // Unicode/ANSI - @endcode - - Of course, it would be nearly impossibly to write such programs if it had to - be done this way (try to imagine the number of @c #ifdef UNICODE an average - program would have had!). Luckily, there is another way - see the next - section. - - @section overview_unicodeinsidewxw Unicode support in wxWidgets - - In wxWidgets, the code fragment from above should be written instead: - - @code - wxChar ch = wxT('*'); - wxString s = wxT("Hello, world!"); - int len = s.Len(); - @endcode - - What happens here? First of all, you see that there are no more @c #ifdefs - at all. Instead, we define some types and macros which behave differently in - the Unicode and ANSI builds and allow us to avoid using conditional - compilation in the program itself. - - We have a @c wxChar type which maps either on @c char or @c wchar_t - depending on the mode in which program is being compiled. There is no need for - a separate type for strings though, because the standard - #wxString supports Unicode, i.e. it stores either ANSI or - Unicode strings depending on the compile mode. - - Finally, there is a special #wxT() macro which should enclose all - literal strings in the program. As it is easy to see comparing the last - fragment with the one above, this macro expands to nothing in the (usual) ANSI - mode and prefixes @c 'L' to its argument in the Unicode mode. - - The important conclusion is that if you use @c wxChar instead of - @c char, avoid using C style strings and use @c wxString instead and - don't forget to enclose all string literals inside #wxT() macro, your - program automatically becomes (almost) Unicode compliant! - - Just let us state once again the rules: - - - Always use @c wxChar instead of @c char - - Always enclose literal string constants in #wxT() macro - unless they're already converted to the right representation (another standard - wxWidgets macro #_() does it, for example, so there is no - need for @c wxT() in this case) or you intend to pass the constant directly - to an external function which doesn't accept wide-character strings. - - Use @c wxString instead of C style strings. - - @section overview_unicodeoutsidewxw Unicode and the outside world - - We have seen that it was easy to write Unicode programs using wxWidgets types - and macros, but it has been also mentioned that it isn't quite enough. - Although everything works fine inside the program, things can get nasty when - it tries to communicate with the outside world which, sadly, often expects - ANSI strings (a notable exception is the entire Win32 API which accepts either - Unicode or ANSI strings and which thus makes it unnecessary to ever perform - any conversions in the program). GTK 2.0 only accepts UTF-8 strings. - - To get an ANSI string from a wxString, you may use the - mb_str() function which always returns an ANSI - string (independently of the mode - while the usual - #c_str() returns a pointer to the internal - representation which is either ASCII or Unicode). More rarely used, but still - useful, is wc_str() function which always returns - the Unicode string. - - Sometimes it is also necessary to go from ANSI strings to wxStrings. - In this case, you can use the converter-constructor, as follows: - - - @code - const char* ascii_str = "Some text"; - wxString str(ascii_str, wxConvUTF8); - @endcode - - This code also compiles fine under a non-Unicode build of wxWidgets, - but in that case the converter is ignored. - - For more information about converters and Unicode see - the @ref overview_mbconvclasses. - - @section overview_unicodesettings Unicode-related compilation settings - - You should define @c wxUSE_UNICODE to 1 to compile your program in - Unicode mode. This currently works for wxMSW, wxGTK, wxMac and wxX11. If you - compile your program in ANSI mode you can still define @c wxUSE_WCHAR_T - to get some limited support for @c wchar_t type. - - This will allow your program to perform conversions between Unicode strings and - ANSI ones (using @ref overview_mbconvclasses) - and construct wxString objects from Unicode strings (presumably read - from some external file or elsewhere). - - @section overview_topic8 Traps for the unwary - - - Casting c_str() to void* is now char*, not wxChar* - - Passing c_str(), mb_str() or wc_str() to variadic functions - doesn't work - - */ - +/** + +@page overview_unicode Unicode Support in wxWidgets + +This section describes how does wxWidgets support Unicode and how can it affect +your programs. + +Notice that Unicode support has changed radically in wxWidgets 3.0 and a lot of +existing material pertaining to the previous versions of the library is not +correct any more. Please see @ref overview_changes_unicode for the details of +these changes. + +You can skip the first two sections if you're already familiar with Unicode and +wish to jump directly in the details of its support in the library: +@li @ref overview_unicode_what +@li @ref overview_unicode_encodings +@li @ref overview_unicode_supportin +@li @ref overview_unicode_pitfalls +@li @ref overview_unicode_supportout +@li @ref overview_unicode_settings + +
+ + +@section overview_unicode_what What is Unicode? + +Unicode is a standard for character encoding which addresses the shortcomings +of the previous, 8 bit standards, by using at least 16 (and possibly 32) bits +for encoding each character. This allows to have at least 65536 characters +(in what is called the BMP, or basic multilingual plane) and possible 2^32 of +them instead of the usual 256 and is sufficient to encode all of the world +languages at once. More details about Unicode may be found at +http://www.unicode.org/. + +From a practical point of view, using Unicode is almost a requirement when +writing applications for international audience. Moreover, any application +reading files which it didn't produce or receiving data from the network from +other services should be ready to deal with Unicode. + + +@section overview_unicode_encodings Unicode Representations + +Unicode provides a unique code to identify every character, however in practice +these codes are not always used directly but encoded using one of the standard +UTF or Unicode Transformation Formats which are algorithms mapping the Unicode +codes to byte code sequences. The simplest of them is UTF-32 which simply maps +the Unicode code to a 4 byte sequence representing this 32 bit number (although +this is still not completely trivial as the mapping is different for little and +big-endian architectures). UTF-32 is commonly used under Unix systems for +internal representation of Unicode strings. Another very widespread standard is +UTF-16 which is used by Microsoft Windows: it encodes the first (approximately) +64 thousands of Unicode characters using only 2 bytes and uses a pair of 16-bit +codes to encode the characters beyond this. Finally, the most widespread +encoding used for the external Unicode storage (e.g. files and network +protocols) is UTF-8 which is byte-oriented and so avoids the endianness +ambiguities of UTF-16 and UTF-32. However UTF-8 uses a variable number of bytes +for representing Unicode characters which makes it less efficient than UTF-32 +for internal representation. + +From the C/C++ programmer perspective the situation is further complicated by +the fact that the standard type @c wchar_t which is used to represent the +Unicode ("wide") strings in C/C++ doesn't have the same size on all platforms. +It is 4 bytes under Unix systems, corresponding to the tradition of using +UTF-32, but only 2 bytes under Windows which is required by compatibility with +the OS which uses UTF-16. + + +@section overview_unicode_supportin Unicode Support in wxWidgets + +Since wxWidgets 3.0 Unicode support is always enabled and building the library +without it is not recommended any longer and will cease to be supported in the +near future. This means that internally only Unicode strings are used and that, +under Microsoft Windows, Unicode system API is used which means that wxWidgets +programs require the Microsoft Layer for Unicode to run on Windows 95/98/ME. + +However, unlike Unicode build mode in the previous versions of wxWidgets, this +support is mostly transparent: you can still continue to work with the narrow +(i.e. @c char*) strings even if wide (i.e. @c wchar_t*) strings are also +supported. Any wxWidgets function accepts arguments of either type as both +kinds of strings are implicitly converted to wxString, so both +@code +wxMessageBox("Hello, world!"); +@endcode +and somewhat less usual +@code +wxMessageBox(L"Salut \u00e0 toi!"); // 00E0 is "Latin Small Letter a with Grave" +@endcode +work as expected. + +Notice that the narrow strings used with wxWidgets are @e always assumed to be +in the current locale encoding, so writing +@code +wxMessageBox("Salut à toi!"); +@endcode +wouldn't work if the encoding used on the user system is incompatible with +ISO-8859-1 (or even if the sources were compiled under different locale +in the case of gcc). In particular, the most common encoding used under +modern Unix systems is UTF-8 and as the string above is not a valid UTF-8 byte +sequence, nothing would be displayed at all in this case. Thus it is important +to never use 8 bit characters directly in the program source but use wide +strings or, alternatively, write +@code +wxMessageBox(wxString::FromUTF8("Salut \xc3\xa0 toi!")); +@endcode + +In a similar way, wxString provides access to its contents as either wchar_t or +char character buffer. Of course, the latter only works if the string contains +data representable in the current locale encoding. This will always be the case +if the string had been initially constructed from a narrow string or if it +contains only 7-bit ASCII data but otherwise this conversion is not guaranteed +to succeed. And as with @c FromUTF8() example above, you can always use @c +ToUTF8() to retrieve the string contents in UTF-8 encoding -- this, unlike +converting to @c char* using the current locale, never fails + +To summarize, Unicode support in wxWidgets is mostly transparent for the +application and if you use wxString objects for storing all the character data +in your program there is really nothing special to do. However you should be +aware of the potential problems covered by the following section. + + +@section overview_unicode_pitfalls Potential Unicode Pitfalls + +The problems can be separated into three broad classes: + +@subsection overview_unicode_compilation_errors Unicode-Related Compilation Errors + +Because of the need to support implicit conversions to both @c char and @c +wchar_t, wxString implementation is rather involved and many of its operators +don't return the types which they could be naively expected to return. For +example, the @c operator[] doesn't return neither a @c char nor a @c wchar_t +but an object of a helper class wxUniChar or wxUniCharRef which is implicitly +convertible to either. Usually you don't need to worry about this as the +conversions do their work behind the scenes however in some cases it doesn't +work. Here are some examples, using a wxString object @c s and some integer @c +n: + + - Writing @code switch ( s[n] ) @endcode doesn't work because the argument of + the switch statement must an integer expression so you need to replace + @c s[n] with @code s[n].GetValue() @endcode. You may also force the + conversion to char or wchar_t by using an explicit cast but beware that + converting the value to char uses the conversion to current locale and may + return 0 if it fails. Finally notice that writing @code (wxChar)s[n] @endcode + works both with wxWidgets 3.0 and previous library versions and so should be + used for writing code which should be compatible with both 2.8 and 3.0. + + - Similarly, @code &s[n] @endcode doesn't yield a pointer to char so you may + not pass it to functions expecting @c char* or @c wchar_t*. Consider using + string iterators instead if possible or replace this expression with + @code s.c_str() + n @endcode otherwise. + +Another class of problems is related to the fact that the value returned by @c +c_str() itself is also not just a pointer to a buffer but a value of helper +class wxCStrData which is implicitly convertible to both narrow and wide +strings. Again, this mostly will be unnoticeable but can result in some +problems: + + - You shouldn't pass @c c_str() result to vararg functions such as standard + @c printf(). Some compilers (notably g++) warn about this but even if they + don't, this @code printf("Hello, %s", s.c_str()) @endcode is not going to + work. It can be corrected in one of the following ways: + + - Preferred: @code wxPrintf("Hello, %s", s) @endcode (notice the absence + of @c c_str(), it is not needed at all with wxWidgets functions) + - Compatible with wxWidgets 2.8: @code wxPrintf("Hello, %s", s.c_str()) @endcode + - Using an explicit conversion to narrow, multibyte, string: + @code printf("Hello, %s", (const char *)s.mb_str()) @endcode + - Using a cast to force the issue (listed only for completeness): + @code printf("Hello, %s", (const char *)s.c_str()) @endcode + + - The result of @c c_str() can not be cast to @c char* but only to @c const @c + @c char*. Of course, modifying the string via the pointer returned by this + method has never been possible but unfortunately it was occasionally useful + to use a @c const_cast here to pass the value to const-incorrect functions. + This can be done either using new wxString::char_str() (and matching + wchar_str()) method or by writing a double cast: + @code (char *)(const char *)s.c_str() @endcode + + - One of the unfortunate consequences of the possibility to pass wxString to + @c wxPrintf() without using @c c_str() is that it is now impossible to pass + the elements of unnamed enumerations to @c wxPrintf() and other similar + vararg functions, i.e. + @code + enum { Red, Green, Blue }; + wxPrintf("Red is %d", Red); + @endcode + doesn't compile. The easiest workaround is to give a name to the enum. + +Other unexpected compilation errors may arise but they should happen even more +rarely than the above-mentioned ones and the solution should usually be quite +simple: just use the explicit methods of wxUniChar and wxCStrData classes +instead of relying on their implicit conversions if the compiler can't choose +among them. + + +@subsection overview_unicode_data_loss Data Loss due To Unicode Conversion Errors + +wxString API provides implicit conversion of the internal Unicode string +contents to narrow, char strings. This can be very convenient and is absolutely +necessary for backwards compatibility with the existing code using wxWidgets +however it is a rather dangerous operation as it can easily give unexpected +results if the string contents isn't convertible to the current locale. + +To be precise, the conversion will always succeed if the string was created +from a narrow string initially. It will also succeed if the current encoding is +UTF-8 as all Unicode strings are representable in this encoding. However +initializing the string using FromUTF8() method and then accessing it as a char +string via its c_str() method is a recipe for disaster as the program may work +perfectly well during testing on Unix systems using UTF-8 locale but completely +fail under Windows where UTF-8 locales are never used because c_str() would +return an empty string. + +The simplest way to ensure that this doesn't happen is to avoid conversions to +@c char* completely by using wxString throughout your program. However if the +program never manipulates 8 bit strings internally, using @c char* pointers is +safe as well. So the existing code needs to be reviewed when upgrading to +wxWidgets 3.0 and the new code should be used with this in mind and ideally +avoiding implicit conversions to @c char*. + + +@subsection overview_unicode_performance Unicode Performance Implications + +Under Unix systems wxString class uses variable-width UTF-8 encoding for +internal representation and this implies that it can't guarantee constant-time +access to N-th element of the string any longer as to find the position of this +character in the string we have to examine all the preceding ones. Usually this +doesn't matter much because most algorithms used on the strings examine them +sequentially anyhow and because wxString implements a cache for iterating over +the string by index but it can have serious consequences for algorithms +using random access to string elements as they typically acquire O(N^2) time +complexity instead of O(N) where N is the length of the string. + +Even despite caching the index, indexed access should be replaced with +sequential access using string iterators. For example a typical loop: +@code +wxString s("hello"); +for ( size_t i = 0; i < s.length(); i++ ) +{ + wchar_t ch = s[i]; + + // do something with it +} +@endcode +should be rewritten as +@code +wxString s("hello"); +for ( wxString::const_iterator i = s.begin(); i != s.end(); ++i ) +{ + wchar_t ch = *i + + // do something with it +} +@endcode + +Another, similar, alternative is to use pointer arithmetic: +@code +wxString s("hello"); +for ( const wchar_t *p = s.wc_str(); *p; p++ ) +{ + wchar_t ch = *i + + // do something with it +} +@endcode +however this doesn't work correctly for strings with embedded @c NUL characters +and the use of iterators is generally preferred as they provide some run-time +checks (at least in debug build) unlike the raw pointers. But if you do use +them, it is better to use wchar_t pointers rather than char ones to avoid the +data loss problems due to conversion as discussed in the previous section. + + +@section overview_unicode_supportout Unicode and the Outside World + +Even though wxWidgets always uses Unicode internally, not all the other +libraries and programs do and even those that do use Unicode may use a +different encoding of it. So you need to be able to convert the data to various +representations and the wxString methods ToAscii(), ToUTF8() (or its synonym +utf8_str()), mb_str(), c_str() and wc_str() can be used for this. The first of +them should be only used for the string containing 7-bit ASCII characters only, +anything else will be replaced by some substitution character. mb_str() +converts the string to the encoding used by the current locale and so can +return an empty string if the string contains characters not representable in +it as explained in @ref overview_unicode_data_loss. The same applies to c_str() +if its result is used as a narrow string. Finally, ToUTF8() and wc_str() +functions never fail and always return a pointer to char string containing the +UTF-8 representation of the string or wchar_t string. + +wxString also provides two convenience functions: From8BitData() and +To8BitData(). They can be used to create wxString from arbitrary binary data +without supposing that it is in current locale encoding, and then get it back, +again, without any conversion or, rather, undoing the conversion used by +From8BitData(). Because of this you should only use From8BitData() for the +strings created using To8BitData(). Also notice that in spite of the +availability of these functions, wxString is not the ideal class for storing +arbitrary binary data as they can take up to 4 times more space than needed +(when using @c wchar_t internal representation on the systems where size of +wide characters is 4 bytes) and you should consider using wxMemoryBuffer +instead. + +Final word of caution: most of these functions may return either directly the +pointer to internal string buffer or a temporary wxCharBuffer or wxWCharBuffer +object. Such objects are implicitly convertible to char and wchar_t pointers, +respectively, and so the result of, for example, ToUTF8() can always be passed +directly to a function taking @c const @c char*. However code such as +@code +const char *p = s.ToUTF8(); +... +puts(p); // or call any other function taking const char * +@endcode +does @b not work because the temporary buffer returned by ToUTF8() is destroyed +and @c p is left pointing nowhere. To correct this you may use +@code +wxCharBuffer p(s.ToUTF8()); +puts(p); +@endcode +which does work but results in an unnecessary copy of string data in the build +configurations when ToUTF8() returns the pointer to internal string buffer. If +this inefficiency is important you may write +@code +const wxUTF8Buf p(s.ToUTF8()); +puts(p); +@endcode +where @c wxUTF8Buf is the type corresponding to the real return type of +ToUTF8(). Similarly, wxWX2WCbuf can be used for the return type of wc_str(). +But, once again, none of these cryptic types is really needed if you just pass +the return value of any of the functions mentioned in this section to another +function directly. + +@section overview_unicode_settings Unicode Related Compilation Settings + +@c wxUSE_UNICODE is now defined as 1 by default to indicate Unicode support. +If UTF-8 is used for the internal storage in wxString, @c wxUSE_UNICODE_UTF8 is +also defined, otherwise @c wxUSE_UNICODE_WCHAR is. + +*/