Drawing UTF8 text

no-reply@allegro.cc (ReVolt) — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 13:09:41 +0000

Hi, I have problem with al_draw_text, I can draw it perfectly, but I want to draw UTF8 characters such as ěščřžýáíé. Is it possible to draw these characters in Allegro 5?

Tahnk you

no-reply@allegro.cc (Arthur Kalliokoski) — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 13:27:48 +0000

I've had the problem of the text editor used on the source files not saving as UTF-8, double check it with a hex editor or something.

no-reply@allegro.cc (ReVolt) — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 13:35:33 +0000

I'm using visual studio 2010 express, i think it saves everythig in utf8 or not?

no-reply@allegro.cc (Arthur Kalliokoski) — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 13:36:43 +0000

I don't know, I use mingw with the SciTech editor on windows.

no-reply@allegro.cc (ReVolt) — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 14:54:11 +0000

too bad .... i've searched internet anf found this:
stackoverflow.com/questions/279673/save-all-files-in-visual-studio-project-as-utf-8

but didn't helped

no-reply@allegro.cc (Edgar Reynaldo) — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 15:28:31 +0000

From the other thread Allegro 5 Unicode Textdraw

Quote:

So, unfortunately, for portability to MSVC, we have to externalise UTF-8
strings or write them out using escape codes.

So load your strings in from a file saved as utf8.

no-reply@allegro.cc (ReVolt) — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 15:36:05 +0000

i can't because strings are generated in run time

no-reply@allegro.cc (Thomas Fjellstrom) — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 18:01:29 +0000

How are they generated at run time? Are any parts of them embedded in the source? Allegro itself is pure UTF8, so if you pass it UTF8 text, it'll draw it. If any of the text is in the source file, your editor could be messing with it.

If what you're doing is concatenating bits of text at run time, take those bits of text from a file.

Or if you want to, I think you can use escape codes in your literal strings, ie: "\xCDFEBA01" to encode the utf8 directly into a literal string, and get around the fact that MSVC is broken. But its a royal pain to have to hand encode the utf8 into hex escape codes.

no-reply@allegro.cc (ReVolt) — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 18:26:33 +0000

it's history of changes

no-reply@allegro.cc (Thomas Fjellstrom) — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 19:02:14 +0000

Meaning what exactly?

no-reply@allegro.cc (ReVolt) — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 20:41:16 +0000

i'm programming board game and it shows hystiry of moves and some words are still the same, do you think that it would be good to load those words from file like suggested other guys?
i would like to avoid that way

no-reply@allegro.cc (Thomas Fjellstrom) — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 20:45:09 +0000

Unfortunately it doesn't look like you can avoid that, if you want to include non ASCII characters.

One bonus to loading from a file, is it'll be easier to translate the game into other languages.

All you really need to do is load the file into an array of strings at program startup, and use that array.

no-reply@allegro.cc (jmasterx) — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 21:04:17 +0000

Here is the simple language manager for my game:

#SelectExpand
   1LanguageManager.hpp
   2
   3#ifndef CGE_LANGUAGE_MANAGER_HPP
   4#define CGE_LANGUAGE_MANAGER_HPP
   5#include 
   6#include 
   7#include 
   8namespace cge
   9{
  10  class LanguageManager
  11  {
  12    std::map<std::string,std::string> m_strings;
  13    std::string m_textNotFound;
  14    bool _loadTexts(const std::string& path);
  15  public:
  16    void mapElement(const std::string& elementName, const std::string& text);
  17    const std::string& getElement(const std::string& elementName);
  18    LanguageManager(const std::string& path);
  19    virtual ~LanguageManager(void);
  20  };
  21}
  22
  23#endif
  24
  25LanguageManager.cpp
  26
  27#include "Game/Engine/LanguageManager.hpp"
  28#include "Game/Utility/File.hpp"
  29namespace cge
  30{
  31  LanguageManager::~LanguageManager(void)
  32  {
  33  }
  34
  35  const std::string& LanguageManager::getElement( const std::string& elementName )
  36  {
  37    if(m_strings.find(elementName) == m_strings.end())
  38    {
  39      return m_textNotFound;
  40    }
  41    else
  42    {
  43      return m_strings[elementName];
  44    }
  45  }
  46
  47  void LanguageManager::mapElement( const std::string& elementName, const std::string& text )
  48  {
  49    m_strings[elementName] = text;
  50  }
  51
  52  bool LanguageManager::_loadTexts( const std::string& path )
  53  {
  54    //open the file
  55    File ifs( path );
  56
  57    //ensure it is open
  58    if(!ifs.isOpen())
  59    {
  60      return false;
  61    }
  62    std::string line;
  63
  64    //read each line
  65    while( ifs.readLine(line) )
  66    {
  67
  68      if(line.length() == 0)
  69      {
  70        continue;
  71      }
  72      else if(line.length() >= 1 && line[0] == '#')
  73      {
  74        continue;
  75      }
  76
  77      int lineAt = 0;
  78      std::string elemName;
  79
  80      //extract until space
  81      while(lineAt < (int)line.length())
  82      {
  83        if(line[lineAt] != ' ')
  84        {
  85          elemName += line[lineAt];
  86          lineAt++;
  87        }
  88        else 
  89        {
  90          lineAt += 3; //' = '
  91          break;
  92        }
  93      }
  94
  95      std::string elemVal;
  96      //extract until end
  97      while(lineAt < (int)line.length())
  98      {
  99        //filter newline
 100        if(line[lineAt] == '\\' && lineAt + 1 < 
 101          (int)line.length() && line[lineAt + 1] == 'n')
 102        {
 103          elemVal += '\n';
 104          lineAt += 2;
 105        }
 106        else 
 107        {
 108          elemVal += line[lineAt];
 109          lineAt++;
 110        }
 111      }
 112
 113      mapElement(elemName, elemVal);
 114    }
 115
 116    return true;
 117  }
 118
 119  LanguageManager::LanguageManager( const std::string& path )
 120    : m_textNotFound("Error: Text not found.")
 121  {
 122    _loadTexts(path);
 123  }
 124
 125}
 126
 127
 128File.hpp
 129#ifndef CGE_FILE_HPP
 130#define CGE_FILE_HPP
 131#include 
 132#include 
 133#include 
 134#include 
 135namespace cge
 136{
 137  class File
 138  {
 139    ALLEGRO_FILE* m_file;
 140  public:
 141    File(void);
 142    bool close();
 143    bool isOpen() const;
 144    bool readLine(std::string& buff);
 145    bool readAll(std::string& buff);
 146    bool open(const std::string& fileName, const std::string& openMode);
 147    File(const std::string& fileName, const std::string& openMode = "r");
 148    bool eof() const;
 149    ~File(void);
 150  };
 151};
 152
 153#endif
 154
 155File.cpp
 156
 157#include "Game/Utility/File.hpp"
 158namespace cge
 159{
 160  File::File(void)
 161    : m_file(NULL)
 162  {
 163  }
 164
 165  File::File( const std::string& fileName, const std::string& openMode /*= "r"*/ )
 166    : m_file(NULL)
 167  {
 168    open(fileName,openMode);
 169  }
 170
 171  File::~File(void)
 172  {
 173  }
 174
 175  bool File::isOpen() const
 176  {
 177    return m_file != NULL;
 178  }
 179
 180  bool File::open( const std::string& fileName, const std::string& openMode )
 181  {
 182    if(isOpen())
 183    {
 184      close();
 185    }
 186
 187    m_file = al_fopen(fileName.c_str(),openMode.c_str());
 188
 189    return m_file != NULL;
 190  }
 191
 192  bool File::close()
 193  {
 194    if(isOpen())
 195    {
 196      al_fclose(m_file);
 197      m_file = NULL;
 198      return true;
 199    }
 200    return false;
 201  }
 202
 203  bool File::eof() const
 204  {
 205    if(!isOpen())
 206    {
 207      return true;
 208    }
 209    else
 210    {
 211      return al_feof(m_file);
 212    }
 213  }
 214
 215  bool File::readLine( std::string& buff )
 216  {
 217    buff = "";
 218    if(eof() || !isOpen())
 219    {
 220      return false;
 221    }
 222
 223    
 224    int c = 0;
 225    while((c = al_fgetc(m_file)) != EOF && c != '\n')
 226    {
 227      if(c > 13)
 228      buff += (char)c;
 229    }
 230
 231    return true;
 232  }
 233
 234  bool File::readAll( std::string& buff )
 235  {
 236    buff = "";
 237    if(eof() || !isOpen())
 238    {
 239      return false;
 240    }
 241
 242
 243    int c = 0;
 244    while((c = al_fgetc(m_file)) != EOF)
 245    {
 246      if(c > 13 || c == '\n')
 247        buff += (char)c;
 248    }
 249
 250    return true;
 251  }
 252
 253}
 254
 255
 256Sample File:
 257nav.back = 
 258nav.sound = 
 259pass.across = Pass\n2\nAcross
 260chat.send = Send
 261chat.mute = Mute...
 262chat.censor = Censor
 263chat.emoticon = 
 264
 265
 266Sample usage:
 267
 268  //init language manager
 269      m_languageManager = new LanguageManager("res/language/english.lang");
 270
 271//set button text
 272m_filterButton->setText(language->getElement("filter.button"));

It looks like a.cc's code blocks don't support unicode so
nav.back = ←
nav.sound = ♪
chat.emoticon = ☺
look empty.

no-reply@allegro.cc (ReVolt) — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 11:40:12 +0000

thank you for your answers, i will use the file

no-reply@allegro.cc (Aikei_c) — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 03:46:08 +0000

You can save the file in UTF8 in Visual Studio by going to File->Advanced Save Options... and selecting Encoding Unicode (UTF-8 without signature) - Codepage 65001.
That works for me.