CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++character-encodinggtk
dcguim
dcguim

Reputation: 13

How to set a text in gtk containing wide characters?

I'm struggling trying to set a wchar_t array in my Gtk/ c++ application. For some unknown reason the Gtk methods do not have a overloaded form which support wchar_t arrays but only gchar ones.

I've read couple articles which made me wonder that it may be a variable-width encoding concern, which is set in regular UTF-8. I'm trying to do something like:

std::wstring propertiesText;

/*
String Manipulation...     
*/

gtk_label_set_text( (GtkLabel*)_propertiesLabel, propertiesText.c_str() );

And as I said said the compiler is complaining that the wchar_t is not supported by this method.

If you can clear my issue in any form or even explain something about these variable-width encoding/ wide-characters relation.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1079

Answers (1)

Basile Starynkevitch
Basile Starynkevitch

Reputation: 1

GTK is built above Glib. And Glib has deeply supposed that all strings are UTF-8 encoded. Also wchar_t is not very portable (on some compilers, it might be 16 bits, on others, it could be 32 bits). So you should avoid using wchar_t or std::wstring in your code. BTW, you could be interested in Gtkmm if you are coding in C++ (then consider using Glib::ustring-s).

If you absolutely need to use std::wstring for some reason you have to make the (perhaps costly) conversions to and from Glib UTF-8 encoded string explicitly by hand.

Upvotes: 3

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