support for Unicode?

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 09 November 2011]

Hi all.

We are just beginning to think about modifying our application to handle international characters, including multibyte characters (e.g., Korean).

I have been browsing the Extend manuals and knowledge base, and I have not found any mention of Unicode or UTF-8 or UTF-16. Does Extend provide any support for Unicode? For example, can I accept a Unicode input string from a user on a screen, store it in a file, and then display it on the screen?

Thanks for any help.

Lee

First take a look at that.
kb.microfocus.com/.../article.aspx

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 09 November 2011]

Hi all.

We are just beginning to think about modifying our application to handle international characters, including multibyte characters (e.g., Korean).

I have been browsing the Extend manuals and knowledge base, and I have not found any mention of Unicode or UTF-8 or UTF-16. Does Extend provide any support for Unicode? For example, can I accept a Unicode input string from a user on a screen, store it in a file, and then display it on the screen?

Thanks for any help.

Lee

Unicode is a very large subject, for COBOL programmers it typically means that you want your user interface and data storage defined by the user environment (locale), so a program can be run in Thailand and India (customer using Hurdu). ACUCOBOL-GT does not support Unicode. You can use different fonts to present and accept a number of different characters (languages) as per the Knowledge base article. If you make your data items large enough (Unicode is 4 bytes per character), Vision will hold Unicode characters. However, ACUCOBOL-GT does not work with files that have a Byte-Order-Mark (BOM) which is what you would use when storing Unicode data. And the ACUCOBOL-GT graphical controls are not set up to display / accept Unicode characters. You mention Korea, as ACUCOBOL-GT is deployed in the Pacific Rim, look up the runtime variable CODE_SYSTEM, you'll see that we do provide support for KSC, however this is not the same as supporting Unicode. I hope this hellp.

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 09 November 2011]

Hi all.

We are just beginning to think about modifying our application to handle international characters, including multibyte characters (e.g., Korean).

I have been browsing the Extend manuals and knowledge base, and I have not found any mention of Unicode or UTF-8 or UTF-16. Does Extend provide any support for Unicode? For example, can I accept a Unicode input string from a user on a screen, store it in a file, and then display it on the screen?

Thanks for any help.

Lee

Thank you for the answers. I have read the Knowledge Base article and the documentation of the CODE_SYSTEM runtime variable. I think I understand it. Please correct me if I am wrong:

1. Several single-byte languages are supported via code pages or fonts: Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Turkish, Russian.

2. ACUCOBOL does not support Unicode but it does support the most common DBCS character sets. If the CODE_SYSTEM runtime value is set correctly, the screens can accept and display Chinese characters (for instance). If the fields are sized appropriately, the Chinese character strings can be stored in Vision files.

I don't see Vietnamese mentioned in the CODE_SERVER documentation: is that not supported? Wikipedia has this to say about "Computer support" for Vietnamese:

'The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.'

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 09 November 2011]

Hi all.

We are just beginning to think about modifying our application to handle international characters, including multibyte characters (e.g., Korean).

I have been browsing the Extend manuals and knowledge base, and I have not found any mention of Unicode or UTF-8 or UTF-16. Does Extend provide any support for Unicode? For example, can I accept a Unicode input string from a user on a screen, store it in a file, and then display it on the screen?

Thanks for any help.

Lee

Yes, you are correct, you answers #1 and #2 are correct. Vietnamese and many other Pac Rim languages are not in the Code_System set of languages. Micro Focus COBOL supports Unicode, you would more than likley need to have your user interface be browser based as that would allow you to support different locales.

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 09 November 2011]

Hi all.

We are just beginning to think about modifying our application to handle international characters, including multibyte characters (e.g., Korean).

I have been browsing the Extend manuals and knowledge base, and I have not found any mention of Unicode or UTF-8 or UTF-16. Does Extend provide any support for Unicode? For example, can I accept a Unicode input string from a user on a screen, store it in a file, and then display it on the screen?

Thanks for any help.

Lee

Are you using Linux or Windows?

I'm working with Linux --> xming -->putty with translation VISCII. Acucobol receives and store Vietnamese, when I want to print I convert to UF8 with iconv.

Let me know if you need some help in Linux environment

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 09 November 2011]

Hi all.

We are just beginning to think about modifying our application to handle international characters, including multibyte characters (e.g., Korean).

I have been browsing the Extend manuals and knowledge base, and I have not found any mention of Unicode or UTF-8 or UTF-16. Does Extend provide any support for Unicode? For example, can I accept a Unicode input string from a user on a screen, store it in a file, and then display it on the screen?

Thanks for any help.

Lee

Hi Paul - and thanks for responding.

We are using Windows, and GUI. I am going to research your implementation, but I suspect it does not apply to the Windows world.

Lee