________________________________________ From: boost-bounces@lists.boost.org [boost-bounces@lists.boost.org] on behalf of Artyom Beilis [artyomtnk@yahoo.com] Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2012 09:57 To: boost@lists.boost.org Subject: Re: [boost] [locale] [filesystem] Windows local 8 bit encoding
________________________________ From: "Thiel, Bjoern" <bjoern.thiel@mpibpc.mpg.de> To: "boost@lists.boost.org" <boost@lists.boost.org> Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2012 4:07 PM Subject: [boost] [locale] [filesystem] Windows local 8 bit encoding
Hi,
Hi,
developing platform independent code I really like the convenience functions conv::to_utf, conv::from_utf, and conv::utf_to_utf from locale. Why not add something like conv::local8bit_to_utf and conv::local8bit_from_utf
First of all locale encoding is not constant, for example there are numerous way to change locale
[...]
Thus the "concept" of the OS locale is quite uncertain and not well defined especially under Microsoft Windows.
Right
Using Boost.Locale you can convert to locale encoding of a given std::locale() object generated with Boost.Locale.
boost::locale::generator allows to select legacy "ANSI" encoding instead of UTF-8 to be default upon creation of the locale object that corresponds to the system locale.
This object you can use with to_utf and from_utf functions.
Unfortunately that does not work under Microsoft Windows as generator locale_generator ; locale_generator.use_ansi_encoding( true ) ; std::locale const current_locale = locale_generator.generate( name ) ; needs a name. If I use the application locale name std::string const name = std::locale().name() ; I get "C" which gives me "US-ASCII" encoding and not the "windows-1252" encoding I have. Even if I use the system locale name std::string const name = std::locale( "" ).name() ; I get "English_United States.1252" which gives me the codepage "1252" as encoding and not "windows-1252" either (conv::to_utf and conv::from_utf just throw "Invalid or unsupported charset:1252" in this case).
[...]
So if you want to write cross platform software stick to UTF-8 and on the boundary of Win32 API convert it to Wide API which is the native Windows API and the correct one to use.
Actually I'm trying to make a shared object (a dll) platform independent that has to do some character conversions according to the current application locale. Best regards Bjoern.