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I am sure this must be simple but I cannot find a way to do it:
I have a Rich Text control in a C application (non-MFC) and I want to draw boxes around some of the text in a form. How do I insert extended ASCII characters (dec 180 - 219 range) into the form?
Or, is there a better way to make a portion of my form appear to be in outlined boxes?
Type them in?
Quzah.
Can you tell me which key I press for the top left corner of a box outline? My keyboard doesn't seem to have any of these keys :
Seriously, Every time I try to send these characters to a RichEdit control, I just get + or -. I know that it has to have something to do with the UTF mode but I can't find any good documentation.
I tried pasting these characters into my program, but, once I save the project and re-open it, the editor changes the characters to "+" and "-":
These originally had the characters in the GIF (in the previous response)Code:const char topLeftCorner[2] = "+";
const char topRightCorner[2] = "+";
const char bottomLeftCorner[2] = "+";
const char bottomRightCorner[2] = "+";
const char topT[2] = "-";
const char bottomT[2] = "-";
const char leftT[2] = "+";
const char rightT[2] = "¦";
const char crossCorner[2] = "+";
const char horizontalLine[2] = "-";
const char verticalLine[2] = "¦";
There is no such thing as "extended ASCII." The box-drawing characters you refer to come from the IBM PC-8 character set.Quote:
Originally Posted by JustMax
There is no key you can press to generate these characters any more than there is a key you can press to generate any arbitrary character in the universe.
Sorry, the missing key was a poor attempt at humor. Actually, the ASCII character set was extended, according to (www.asciitable.com):
"As people gradually required computers to understand additional characters and non-printing characters the ASCII set became restrictive. As with most technology, it took a while to get a single standard for these extra characters and hence there are few varying 'extended' sets."
That, however is a debate I do not wish to engage in. I am just trying to learn and understand how to pass these characters so that I can create a nice looking report.
Code:char topLeftCorner = "┌";
char topRightCorner = "┐";
char bottomLeftCorner = "└";
char bottomRightCorner = "┘";
char topT = "┬";
char bottomT = "┴";
char leftT = "├";
char rightT = "┤";
char crossCorner = "┼";
char horizontalLine = "─";
char verticalLine = "│";
strcpy(line,topLeftCorner);
"─" - this is a string
'─' this is 1 char
Vart,
Thanks for pointing that out. When I change them to the single quotes, I get:
'strcat' : cannot convert parameter 2 from 'const char' to 'const char *'
at my strcpy and strcat lines. (I didn't show it above but I am concatenating the chars to it).
strcat works on strings, not chars. If you want to add a char to the end of a string, you can do:
I didn't run the above code through a compiler, but you should get the basic idea.Code:char some_string[100] = "some string";
char char_to_append = 'a';
size_t str_len = strlen(some_string);
some_string[str_len++] = char_to_append;
some_string[str_len] = '\0';
The debate is unavoidable. The identity of a code point is determined by a code page. The question of what the magic number is is not even the right question.Quote:
Originally Posted by JustMax
And if IBM PC-8 is "extended ASCII" then I'm going to call Unicode "extended ASCII" as well. As soon as there was more than one extension to ASCII the term became meaningless.
Thanks for the example. I have adapted it to my application:
but it still sends:Code://build top line of the form
int chars;
char topLeftCorner = '┌';
char topRightCorner = '┐';
char bottomLeftCorner = '└';
char bottomRightCorner = '┘';
char topT = '┬';
char bottomT = '┴';
char leftT = '├';
char rightT = '┤';
char crossCorner = '┼';
char horizontalLine = '─';
char verticalLine = '│';
char topLine[100] = " ";
size_t str_len = strlen(topLine);
topLine[str_len++] = '┌';
for (chars=1; chars<=86; chars++)
{
topLine[str_len++] =horizontalLine;
}
topLine[str_len++] =topRightCorner;
topLine[str_len] = '\0';
//Send the top line to the RichEdit control
SendDlgItemMessage( hwndDlg, IDC_RICHEDIT, WM_SETTEXT, 0, (LPARAM) topLine );
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
to my form.
Any debate is avoidable. Watch . . . .Quote:
Originally Posted by brewbuck
So on a system where the default codepage is not IBM PC-8 your code will display garbage. That's okay with you?Quote:
Originally Posted by JustMax
I do appreciate your eagerness to discuss this and I am sure that you would prove your point very well. That is not, however what I am after. Once again, I am simply asking if it is possible to send these characters from my application to a richedit control.
Do you believe this is possible? If you do, would you please help me to understand how I would do it?
I don't see why it is not possible if the control has been set to use the correct codepage.Quote:
Originally Posted by JustMax
Since you knew that they're extended characters already, I assumed you were smart enough to know what the character mapper is, or how to enter extended characters. I'll be sure not to make assumptions as to your intellect in the future.Quote:
Originally Posted by JustMax
Quzah.
brewbuck,
How would I set the control to use the correct codepage?
Windows API's use 2 different character representations. There's the "ansi" or "asci" or "narrow" representation which uses 8bit code points or character codes. Each character code is used as an index into a code page table to determine the glyph to use for that character code. All Windows code pages use the same glyph for code points 0x00 to 0x7F. So 'A' is always 0x41 in all code pages, etc...
The other character representation is "wide" or Unicode using UTF16LE as the encoding. Think of Unicode as a globalized/standardized code page - where all Unicode characters (and their glyphs) are assigned a unique code point.
Many Windows API functions come in 2 flavors - "Ansi" and "Wide". For example there's SetWindowTextA() and SetWindowTextW(). SetWindowTextA() converts the given string to Unicode and calls SetWindowTextW(). The conversion is done using the system "Ansi Code Page" (ACP). The ACP is a system setting that you don't modify. Since you don't know what the ACP will be, it doesn't make sense to hard code an "extended" (greater than 0x7F) character code - since the ACP determines the resulting glyph. If you hard code a Unicode character, there's no need to worry about conversions or code pages.
>> once I save the project and re-open it, the editor changes the characters to "+" and "-"
Using character literals with a code point greater than 0x7F can easily go wrong. First there's whatever editor the developer is using and how it decides to save the source file. Then the compiler has to read it and decide how to map it to the "execution character set" (which is "implementation defined" by the way). So it's best to stick with your basic asci character set in source code.
Now that you know how to represent the glyph your want to render, you just have to make sure the font you're using supports that glyph. Run "charmap.exe" and type in the Unicode code point to see if a font supports a glyph.
Here's a quick reference of Unicode code point values for box drawing characters: Selected Unicode Characters 2500-25FF
Here's how you would define one in code:
ggCode:const wchar_t Box_DownRight = L'\u250C';
Finally, an answer instead of a question or a debate! Thank you so much.