encoding multiple character sets

[Brian O'Haire]

Hi

I am doing a project where I have to use multiple character sets for the
input. They would be English, Symbol and possible Greek, These will be used
as symbols for processing an algebraic expression. I need to input them
and then display them on a windows screen. There is a total of 10 symbols
not in the ASCII character set.
This is a new area for me and would appreciate some pointers on how to
approach the problem. I am not sure if I should be looking at Unicode or
something else.

I would appreciate any suggestions of coding examples some one could
suggest. I am using c# and net 1.0.

Thanks in advance for your help.
Brian O'Haire

 

[Bret Mulvey [MS]]

In theory, for a WinForms app you probably don't even need to worry about
it. The String class is Unicode-based, so you should able able to manipulate
any character without any special code.

The trick is choosing a font that contains representations of all the
characters you'll be using. Arial contains the Latin alphabet, the Greek
alphabet, and many mathematical operators, but not as many as the Symbol
font. If you need to use a mix of fonts to display all the characters you
need, then it could get more complicated since the built-in controls mostly
only let you specify a single font for display.

 

[Daniel O'Connell]

In theory, for a WinForms app you probably don't even need to worry about
it. The String class is Unicode-based, so you should able able to manipulate
any character without any special code.

The trick is choosing a font that contains representations of all the
characters you'll be using. Arial contains the Latin alphabet, the Greek
alphabet, and many mathematical operators, but not as many as the Symbol
font. If you need to use a mix of fonts to display all the characters you
need, then it could get more complicated since the built-in controls mostly
only let you specify a single font for display.

A unicode font, something like Arial Unicode MS or other full unicode fonts
should have most of what you want. The main problem I'd see is simplicity of
input, I assume you are expecting the user to type in the commands. Do you
have a method of inserting those characters figured out? alt+number
combinations are not fun and several of those characters are not on a
standard english keyboard.