Displaying Unicode text in a control

by Richard Russell, February 2012

Versions 1.80 and later of LB Booster provide built-in support to output Unicode text to the mainwin, and to the printer using LPRINT, but not to GUI controls. In the case of controls other than a TEXTEDITOR it is quite easy to support Unicode output using a little API code.

Below is listed a program to illustrate displaying Cyrillic text in a STATICTEXT control. The SetTextUnicode subroutine can also be used with a BUTTON, a CHECKBOX, a GROUPBOX, a RADIOBUTTON or a TEXTBOX (ensure that you select Unicode Support in the Options menu):

   global CP.UTF8
   CP.UTF8 = hexdec("FDE9")
   nomainwin
 
   statictext #w.s1, "", 10, 10, 300, 100
   open "Unicode test" for window as #w
   #w "trapclose  [quit]"
   #w "font Times_New_Roman 20"
   hws1 = hwnd(#w.s1)
   call SetTextUnicode hws1, "Это демонстрация российского текста"
   wait
 
  [quit]
   close #w
   end
 
  sub SetTextUnicode hwin, utf8$
   calldll #kernel32, "MultiByteToWideChar", _
     CP.UTF8 as long, 0 as long, _
     utf8$ as ptr, -1 as long, _
     0 as long, 0 as long, ret as long
     bytes = 2 * ret
   calldll #kernel32, "GlobalAlloc", 0 as long, _
     bytes as long, wide as long
   calldll #kernel32, "MultiByteToWideChar", _
     CP.UTF8 as long, 0 as long, _
     utf8$ as ptr, -1 as long, _
     wide as long, ret as long, ret as long
   calldll #user32, "SendMessageW", _
     hwin as long, _WM_SETTEXT as long, _
     0 as long, wide as long, ret as long
   calldll #kernel32, "GlobalFree", wide as long, _
     ret as long
  end sub