As most of you know, VB6 is built internaly with unicode support, but all it's custom controls, are only ANSI compliant, meaning you will get a series of ???'s when inserting unicode characters, from, say, MySQL database...
There are tons of solutions for this, from using API to create a textBox that supports unicode, to using MS Forms 2.0, buying custom ActiveX that has support for unicode, and ofcorse, migrating to .Net...
Well, all of these are nice, but sometimes, they don't work... First, using API to create a unicode capable textbox is too much pain and suffering, for the effect - just not worth it... MS Forms, not redistributable, and besides, doesn't always work (didn't work for me)... Buyin some third party ActiveX, may be cost ineffective, specialy, if you're doing somethiong for a school project, or just for yourself... I for one thing wouldn'tpay $300+, to have a third party ActiveX, for my control center programm, that is only for my personal use... Migrating to .Net is not a solution..
This is what I did, to be able do display charactes that I needed, from latin writing of my language... These characters are "ŠĐČĆŽ" both in upper, and lower case... Bunch of ?'s, if VB's controls are concerned...
Unicode rules are too extensive to cover here now, but I'm sure you will find plentu of information on the internet... What I did, is created a substitution table, for my characters, and whenever I find a sequence of bytes that equal unicode character value of characters in question, I replace them with ANSI equivalents... Now, you might wonder how I do this... Well, every Windows, when installed, offers multiple inpukeyboard languages... That, combined with .Charset property of textbox, set to the correct codepage, you can get your national characters in ANSI... I'm not sure how this works for Chinese, Japanese, and other languages that have hundreds of different characters, so I'm not going into that now... As I sadi, this is ONLY a WORKAROUND, not a way to make VB6 controls recognize unicode...
Anyways, enough itroduction, let's get to the code part... Oh, I should just mention one thing more, that this will only work for strings, or possibli text files (haven't tried it with files)... I made these functions, to successfully get the data from the database (hosted at Trap17
), then display it correctly in my textbox, and after editing the text, upload it back to the database, again, as UTF8, for correct displaying on the webpage (I hate that Windows-1250 codepage)CODE
Option Explicit
Option Base 0
Private Conversion As New Collection
Public Function ANSIToUTF8(ByVal ANSI As String) As String
Dim i As Long
Dim aW As Long
Dim aB As Byte
Dim s As String
s = ""
For i = 1 To Len(ANSI)
aW = Asc(Mid(ANSI, i, 1))
aB = AscB(Mid(ANSI, i, 1))
If aW >= 0 And aW <= 126 Then
s = s & StrConv(ChrB(aB), vbUnicode)
Else
s = s & StrConv(ChrW(Conversion.Item(Trim(CStr(aW)))), vbUnicode)
End If
Next i
ANSIToUTF8 = s
End Function
Public Function UTF8ToANSI(ByVal UTF As String) As String
Dim i As Long
Dim l1 As Long
Dim l2 As Long
Dim J As Long
Dim l() As Long
Dim s As String
ReDim b(0 To Len(UTF) - 1)
For i = 0 To Len(UTF) - 1
b(i) = Asc(Mid(UTF, i + 1, 1))
Next i
For i = LBound(
To UBound(ReDim Preserve l(J)
If b(i) >= 0 And b(i) <= 126 Then
l(J) = b(i)
Else
l1 = b(i + 1)
l1 = l1 * 256
l2 = b(i) + (b(i + 1) \ 256)
l(J) = l1 + l2
i = i + 1
End If
J = J + 1
Next i
For i = LBound(l) To UBound(l)
l1 = l(i)
If l1 >= 0 And l1 <= 126 Then
s = s & Chr(l1)
Else
s = s & Chr(Conversion.Item(Trim(Hex(l1))))
End If
Next i
UTF8ToANSI = s
End Function
Private Sub Class_Initialize()
' ANSI -> UTF8 (uppercase)
' ANSI charcode is used as a key to access the item in Conversion collection
' actual value for Conversion.Item("138") = &HA0C5
Conversion.Add &HA0C5, "138"
Conversion.Add &H90C4, "208"
Conversion.Add &H8CC4, "200"
Conversion.Add &H86C4, "198"
Conversion.Add &HBDC5, "142"
' ANSI -> UTF8 (lowercase)
Conversion.Add &HA1C5, "154"
Conversion.Add &H91C4, "240"
Conversion.Add &H8DC4, "232"
Conversion.Add &H87C4, "230"
Conversion.Add &HBEC5, "158"
' UTF8 -> ANSI (uppercase)
' UTF charcode (in hex) is used as a key to access the item in Conversion collection
' actual value for Conversion.Item("A0C5") = 138
Conversion.Add 138, "A0C5"
Conversion.Add 208, "90C4"
Conversion.Add 200, "8CC4"
Conversion.Add 198, "86C4"
Conversion.Add 142, "BDC5"
' UTF8 -> ANSI (lowercase)
Conversion.Add 154, "A1C5"
Conversion.Add 240, "91C4"
Conversion.Add 232, "8DC4"
Conversion.Add 230, "87C4"
Conversion.Add 158, "BEC5"
End Sub
Private Sub Class_Terminate()
Set Conversion = Nothing
End Sub
Just paste that entire code inside a Class module, and off you go... You get instant Serbain unicode support in VB6...
Change the values in Conversion collection, to add your own characters to this class, and make it work... Perhaps, if someone here from China or Japan tries this, and it works, they could send me the charodes... If it works with all characters and all languages, I guess I could make some sort of a project... Actualy, this is goind to be a project, I'll publish it on my website... Opensource, of course
Hope someone found this useful...
EDIT:
It appears that previous version of this code worked in some cases, and still provided bunch of ???'s in others... Now, I have added StrConv() function inside ANSIToUTF8() function, and as far as I tested this iteration, it appears that this function is now functioning... Also, changed ChrW() to Chr() inside UTF8ToANSI() function, in the area relating to conventional alphanumerical characters... Sorry 'bout this error
...
