<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<chapter id="unicode">

<title>Unicode and FXRuby</title>

<para>Beginning with version 1.6, FOX and FXRuby provide support for the

display of Unicode strings in FOX widgets. For some excellent discussion

about how to use Unicode in Ruby, I recommend Patrick Hall's article, <ulink

url="http://ruphus.com/blog/2005/06/11/ruby-and-unicode/">"Ruby and

Unicode"</ulink> and why the lucky stiff's follow-up article, <ulink

url="http://redhanded.hobix.com/inspect/closingInOnUnicodeWithJcode.html">"Closing

in on Unicode with Jcode"</ulink>. Here, we're going to make use of the

ideas in those articles to give a quick demonstration of how to use FXRuby's

support for Unicode.</para>

<section>

<title>Basic Application</title>

<para>Here's the original version of our "Hello, World!" program:</para>

<programlisting format="linespecific">require 'fox16'

include Fox

application = FXApp.new("Hello", "FoxTest")

main = FXMainWindow.new(application, "Hello", nil, nil, DECOR_ALL)

FXButton.new(main, "&amp;Hello, World!", nil, application, FXApp::ID_QUIT)

application.create()

main.show(PLACEMENT_SCREEN)

application.run()

</programlisting>

<para>and here's the modified version:</para>

<programlisting format="linespecific">require 'fox16'

<emphasis role="bold">require 'jcode'</emphasis>

<emphasis role="bold">$KCODE = 'u'</emphasis>

<emphasis role="bold">class UString &lt; String

# Show u-prefix as in Python

def inspect; "u#{ super }" end

# Count multibyte characters

def length; self.scan(/./).length end

# Reverse the string

def reverse; self.scan(/./).reverse.join end

end

module Kernel

def u( str )

UString.new str.gsub(/U\+([0-9a-fA-F]{4,4})/u){["#$1".hex ].pack('U*')}

end

end</emphasis>

include Fox

<emphasis role="bold">question = u'U+00bfHabla espaU+00f1ol?'</emphasis>

application = FXApp.new("Hello", "FoxTest")

main = FXMainWindow.new(application, "Hello", nil, nil, DECOR_ALL)

FXButton.new(main, <emphasis role="bold">question</emphasis>, nil, application, FXApp::ID_QUIT)

application.create()

main.show(PLACEMENT_SCREEN)

application.run()

</programlisting>

<para>The <emphasis role="bold">jcode</emphasis> library (part of the

standard Ruby library) provides a number of extensions to Ruby's

<classname>String</classname> class, to ensure that its methods work

properly for non-ASCII character encodings. By setting the

<varname>$KCODE</varname> global variable to "u", we're telling Ruby which

character encoding it is that we're using (UTF-8).</para>

</section>

</chapter>