[vorbis-dev] UTF-8 & Hebrew

Beni Cherniavksy
Wed, 06 Mar 2002 02:25:25 -0000

On 2002-03-06, Ross Levis wrote:

> My Win32 comment editor uses a routine of my own to read comments
> directly from OGG files but uses vorbiscomment.exe to write comments.
> I've implemented a UTF-8 function which I found on the internet to
> decode UTF-8.  It appears to be working fine for most European
> characters, however, I have a Russian user using WinXP who is entering
> Hebrew characters such as "???? ??????".  He can enter these OK
but they
> are either not encoding properly in vorbiscomment or my UTF-8 function
> is not decoding properly.  All he sees with my program and the Winamp
> plugin is "????????".
>
> I don't know much about unicode.  Can anyone shed any light?
>
Seems like a known winamp/windows problem.  Winamp doesn't use unicode for
displaying titles, so they are squeezed through the default codepage.
Fortunately, win2000 allows switching the default codepage and I suppose
winXP allows it too.  He needs to open Control Panel --> Regional Options
--> press "Set Default..." button near buttom on General tab and
select
Hebrew.  After that he will see Hebrew titles in Winamp (if the comments
are correct) but will no longer see Russian titles...  No way around it in
winamp 2, winamp 3 will eventually use Unicode (maybe already does).
Unfortunately this is global for all programs, requires a restart and
admistrative priviledges.  So he might not like it.

Tip: even if the default codepage is Russian, he should be able to see
Hebrew tags in the comment editor of winamp (Alt-3).  This is a way to
check whether the tags are to blame.

Tip(?) 2: he can try changing the font used by winamp to one that has
Hebrew characters in place of russian ones (I don't know of any such font,
I use primarily Hebrew and sometimes Russian and I use a font with Russian
characters in place of english ones...  Maybe he can also foul windows
with existing fonts or create new ones if the knows how).  This will allow
him to swithch between seeing Hebrew and Russian by switching the skin,
without touching the rest of windows.  If he succeeds, please tell me ;)

> Please CC to ross@stationplaylist.com.
>


--
Beni Cherniavsky <cben@tx.technion.ac.il>
                 (also scben@t2 in Technion)
Common Lisp is better than Common Source and
Open Source is better than Open Collector (YMMV).