no-reply@allegro.cc (Aikei_c) — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 23:42:50 +0000

I now work on a project which loads allegro unicode strings from lua script. It goes like this: first a function in lua creates strings, then it passes an array of these strings to c++ code which places them into a vector for later use.
Here is my simple lua code which creates strings, pretty straight-forward:

#SelectExpand
  1function CreateStrings(lang)
lang = lang or "english"
local strings =  { }
if (lang == "english") then
  strings = 
  {
    "Select Class",
    "Edit Class"
  }
end
 11
if (lang == "russian") then
  strings =
  {
    "Выбор класса",
    "Редактирование класса"
  }
end
return strings  
 20end
 21
 22function GetStrings()
local strings = CreateStrings("russian")
return strings
 25end

As you can see, it creates an array of strings either in Russian or in English. Then it gets passed to the c++ code here:

#SelectExpand
  2void CPlGameView::LoadStringsFromLua()
  3{
  4  ALLEGRO_USTR* str;
  5  LuaFunction<LuaObject> GetStrings = LuaManager.GetGlobalState()->GetGlobal("GetStrings");
  6  LuaObject luaStrings = GetStrings();
  7  for (int i = 0; i < STRID_LAST_ID; i++)
  8  {
  9    const char* ch;
 10    ch = luaStrings[i+1].GetString();
 11    strings.push_back(al_ustr_new(ch));
 12  }
 13}

These strings should be window titles. However, when I later try to display the text with al_draw_ustr:

#SelectExpand
 3al_draw_ustr(font,PALETTE[BACKGROUND_COLOR],pos.x+2,pos.y,0,title);

I get empty window titles when choosing russian. Everything displays fine if I choose English. Look attachements.
You may think that this is the lua problem, however, I tried to substitute the variable ch for literal cyrillic string:

#SelectExpand
 4strings.push_back(al_ustr_new("Выбор класса"))

- the situation is the same. No text. On the other hand, everything is again fine with literal string in english is used.
I went even further and debugged the variables.
So, when the code gets c string from lua everything is fine, which is no wonder (you can look it in attachements). But what is more astonishing is that when I look at contents of ALLEGERO_USTR the text displayed in the debegger is again right. Even right before displaying the window title. However the russian text is still not displayed.

So, maybe al_draw_ustr is to blame? No. I wrote code loading ALLEGRO_USTR right from a file without using al_ustr_new():

#SelectExpand
  5bool CPlGameView::LoadStrings(const char* lang)
  6{
ALLEGRO_USTR* str;
ALLEGRO_FILE* langfile;
if (strcmp(lang,"russian") == 0)
{
  langfile = al_fopen("rus.l","r");
}
else
if (strcmp(lang,"english") == 0)
  langfile = al_fopen("eng.l","r");
else
{
  WRITE_VIEWLOG("error: wrong language file name!");
  return false;
}
 21
str = al_fget_ustr(langfile);
while (!al_feof(langfile))
{
  str = al_fget_ustr(langfile);
  al_ustr_rtrim_ws(str);
  strings.push_back(str);
}
al_fclose(langfile);
return true;
 31}

which loads russian text. Then this text gets displayed with al_draw_ustr() just fine. So, there is either a bug here with loading multibyte utf-8 characters with al_ustr_new(), or I am doing something wrong, which you probably can explain to me. Thank you for you patience if you read to the end

no-reply@allegro.cc (Arthur Kalliokoski) — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 23:50:24 +0000

Usually these types of problems are caused by your source code editor not saving files as proper UTF8.

no-reply@allegro.cc (Aikei_c) — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 00:05:30 +0000

You know, I just checked it and it seems you were right. Thsnks.

Something is terribly wrong with al_ustr_new()