Forums Bug Reports utf8 support beta16

Hello,
i'm not able to read everything above U+266F.
I tried with VERDANA font, arial, calibri and comic sans.
I can see ♯ but not ♰,♲.
Also, when i write some of the characters tabove, mIRC doesn't show the text after.

/echo -a ♰♰ ♽ abcdefg
shows only 3 squares and abc

Nit picking a little but, where do you get "beta 16" from? Pretty sure it's something like "mIRC v7.0 April 2nd 2010" at the moment.

//echo -a $version $beta
7.0 beta16
^^

Unicode from 2700 up is Unicode v5.2. If the font does not support that version of Unicode, it cannot display the characters. From what I have seen, most fonts don't support it (yet). You'd have to google for a font that supports Unicode 5.2. Although, at the same time, unless you're displaying it locally, it's not a good idea to send the text to others because they won't see it unless they also have a font that supports Unicode 5.2.

@StrawberryKitty: The current beta is beta16.

EDIT: As a note, Unicode 5.2 was released last October, so it's really new and it will take time for the fonts to update to include those characters

If you mean that you cannot see the characters in the editbox while you are typing them, there is little mIRC can do about that. mIRC depends entirely on the Windows richedit control for text input. mIRC v7.0 uses the latest version of richedit, msftedit.dll, for better Unicode support, however the editbox has its limitations. In fact, if I paste the same text into the Internet Explorer address editbox, it also displays boxes for those characters. Firefox displays the characters correctly though, so they are probably using their own display method.

That said, mIRC is displaying these characters correctly in the text display of the window for me. In this case, mIRC is using its own routines to display text that are independent of the editbox.

@Riamus2 Thank you for the explanation.
@Kalhed Which font are you using? i'm running windows vista and i wasn't able to show those characters in the text display

Neither was i.

Windows 7 x64.

Yeah, Khaled. I cannot make the Unicode 5.2 characters appear in Win7 either using Arial Unicode MS or Calibri. I didn't bother trying to find other fonts. They show as boxes everywhere in mIRC, including the edit line.

Now, I don't have any fonts installed (or updated) after October, so I am sure the fonts I have do not support Unicode 5.2 unless they adopted it prior to release. Even then, I doubt the fonts that were installed in addition to what Windows 7 installs automatically using the US version have Unicode 5.2 compatibility. So I don't expect to be able to see the characters at all in mIRC.

Maybe you have a newer font installed and fontlinking is helping you to see the characters?

I am using FixedSys, however that is not important since mIRC performs font-linking - that is, it will look through your installed fonts to find one that can display that particular character (mIRC depends on a Windows feature to do that). I have a large number of fonts installed, so that is probably why I can see those characters here.

Ok, so that shows that mIRC has no problems with Unicode 5.2 and it's simply a font issue as I had expected. Now, it's just a matter of getting fonts to support the characters. I'm guessing the next Windows release will include fonts that support it. Until then, I'd stick to local display of those characters only since you can't be sure if others will see them.

@Cumas: As far as mIRC only showing part of the text following those characters, there may be an issue with the unicode characters having diatrics, which are giving you problems. If you were to try 3 other characters, do you still lose the ending letters of the line in your /echo example?

i tried a lot of chars, the problem occours only with unicode5.2 chars (above 2670)

MacOS 10.4.11, all apps... I see

&#9840 = Cross
&#9853 = Recycle Symbol


Windows XP SP3, most apps (webkit, mirc, etc)

&#9840 = Box
&#9853 = Box

Windows XP SP3, IE8

&#9840 = Cross
&#9853 = Box

Windows XP SP3, Firefox

&#9840 = Cross
&#9853 = Square w/ numbers inside it

I'll try MacOS 10.6.3 later but it'll probably show same as 10.4.11.

In anycase I am not sure what I'm supposed to see... I see Windows really doesn't do Unicode well at all. But that's it.