Ideas to Remember as You Convert from ASCII or ANSI to Unicode (130052)
The information in this article applies to:
- Microsoft Win32 Software Development Kit (SDK) 3.5
- Microsoft Win32s 1.2
This article was previously published under Q130052 SUMMARY
Because the industry is moving to Windows NT, and Windows NT supports
Unicode, many independent software vendors (ISVs) want to know how to
convert existing ASCII (or ANSI) help and resource files into Unicode. This
article gives you some notes on the subject.
MORE INFORMATION
When converting ASCII to Unicode, remember that the entire ASCII characters
map perfectly to the first characters in Unicode. You need only add a
second null bit and a 0x00 in the high byte.
When converting ANSI to Unicode, UCONVERT.EXE sources in the Win32 SDK and
the good illustration of win32 MultiBytetoWideChar conversion API are
helpful sources to consult.
When converting a Help file, you face the challenge presented by the fact
that the old ANSI RTF format is clueless about wide characters. Also, you
need an RTF format for each specific country. For example, you'll need one
specific to Japan, another separate RTF format for Korea, and so on. In
addition, you might want to consider converting to the newer, much more
powerful Help file formats supported in the Windows 95 Help file system;
this may be an easier solution.
Help files in Windows NT versions 3.1 and 3.5 use the same Help file format
as Windows version 3.1 does. But newer operating systems such as Windows 95
contains a new help file compiler, engine, and format. One reason that
Microsoft made this change was to improve international support.
One final idea you might want to consider is to develop your own converter
by using the MutltiByteToWideChar() API. In fact, this may be the best
approach, because application developers know exactly what kind of user
interface they want to implement.
Modification Type: | Major | Last Reviewed: | 10/30/2003 |
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Keywords: | kbIntl kbIntlDev KB130052 |
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