Extended characters with Allegro 4.9.21

no-reply@allegro.cc (Marce666) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:09:20 +0000

Hi,

I wanna known how in Allegro 4.9.21 can I write characters like áçñÑè among others. Using .TTF (TrueTypeFonts)

I used to use set_uformat(U_ASCII) in Allegro 4.2 but I cannot found an equivalent here.

Thanks in advance.
Marce.

no-reply@allegro.cc (Evert) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:12:53 +0000

You can input them as UTF-8 characters. See the ex_font example.

no-reply@allegro.cc (Thomas Fjellstrom) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:14:47 +0000

Marce666 said:

I wanna known how in Allegro 4.9.21 can I write characters like áçñÑè among others.

Allegro 5's new string api uses utf8. So you can generally just use utf8 anywhere and it ought to work. Though I think things will work more reliably if you use the _ustr functions when you have the option, rather than the functions that take plain char*. like al_draw_ustr rather than al_draw_text.

no-reply@allegro.cc (Marce666) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:20:51 +0000

Thanks, but where should I look up those examples ?

no-reply@allegro.cc (Evert) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:28:45 +0000

In the example/ directory that comes with Allegro.

no-reply@allegro.cc (Marce666) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 22:11:51 +0000

Example of ex_font doesn't helps me because I have to use TrueTypeFont.
I also tried with utf8 but no extended characters appears.

In both cases, print function works until first extended characters is found.
In the attachment the resulting file.

Here the code:

#SelectExpand
  1al_init(); 
  2al_init_font_addon(); 
  3al_init_ttf_addon(); 
  4al_init_image_addon(); 
  5al_init_primitives_addon();
  6
  7display = al_create_display(320, 200);
  8al_draw_filled_rectangle(0, 0, 320, 200, al_map_rgb(0, 0, 180));
  9
 10ALLEGRO_FONT * pFont = al_load_ttf_font("ARIAL.TTF", 30, 0);
 11ALLEGRO_USTR * pText = al_ustr_new("Hello á Bye");
 12    
 13//draw with ALLEGRO_USTR
 14al_draw_ustr(pFont, al_map_rgb(255, 255, 0), 10, 10, ALLEGRO_ALIGN_LEFT, pText);
 15
 16// draw with char *
 17al_draw_text(pFont, al_map_rgb(255, 0, 0), 10, 50, ALLEGRO_ALIGN_LEFT, "Hello ñ Bye ");
 18
 19ALLEGRO_BITMAP * pBitmap = al_get_backbuffer(display);
 20if (pBitmap)
 21  al_save_bitmap("file1.bmp", pBitmap);

Any idea ?

Thanks, Marce.

no-reply@allegro.cc (Elias) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 01:08:06 +0000

In your editor, make sure the file is encoded as UTF8.

no-reply@allegro.cc (Marce666) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 01:26:43 +0000

Yes, my editor was set to Auto-dectect UTF8.
Still not working...

no-reply@allegro.cc (Elias) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 01:38:23 +0000

Does ex_ttf work?

no-reply@allegro.cc (Thomas Fjellstrom) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 06:24:58 +0000

Make sure your font contains that particular character.

no-reply@allegro.cc (Kibiz0r) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 07:10:50 +0000

I've never done unicode in C/C++, but I've seen L"some unicode string" before... Try that?

no-reply@allegro.cc (Peter Wang) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 09:05:33 +0000

That's the syntax for a wide character strings, which is too ambigous to be usable in portable programs. Allegro only accepts UTF-8 encoded strings.

no-reply@allegro.cc (Michał Cichoń) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:11:18 +0000

When you source code is in UTF-8 every string you put in will work with Allegro. UCS-2 (L"" syntax) is supported in modern compilers, but usually there are not standard libraries which allow to convert between UCS-2 and UTF-8. Allegro have handy routines to deal with such conversion, look at al_utf8_width() and al_utf8_encode().

In case, when you want full Unicode support you need to use native system routines or external library.

no-reply@allegro.cc (Marce666) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 19:35:08 +0000

Finally the problem was the encode of the main.pp file.
example ex_ttf.c works fine.

Eventhought UTF-8 was in auto-detect mode (Visual Studio 2010 express), each file has to be save as unicode-UTF8.

Save File AS -> Save with encoding -> Unicode (UTF-8 widthout signature) - Codepage 65001

Nota: I have to save to another encode, save, close (IDE), open and then set the correct codepage.

Thanks All !!!!
Marce.