Re: [boost] Silly Boost.Locale default narrowstringencodinginWindows

Subject: Re: [boost] Silly Boost.Locale default narrowstringencodinginWindows
From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-10-28 08:38:28

Alf P. Steinbach wrote:
On 28.10.2011 12:36, Yakov Galka wrote:
> > This is because windows narrow-chars can't be UTF-8. You could make it
> > portable by:
> >
> > int main()
> > {
> >      boost::printf("Blåbærsyltetøy! 日本国 кошка!\n");
> > }
>
> Thanks, TIL boost::printf.

No, I don't think that this works. The problem here is not the printf call, 
it's the literal. When a char[] that does contain the proper UTF-8 text is 
passed, printf works under chcp 65001.

In principle, you should still need to use the hypothetical boost::printf, 
though, if you want the program to properly support arbitrary code pages 
(not that the text above can be output in any code page other than 65001).

> When every portability problem has been diagnosed and special cased to use 
> functions that translate to/from UTF-8 translation, and ignoring the 
> efficiency aspect of that, then UTF-8 just magically works, hurray.
>
> E.g., if 'fopen( "rød.txt", "r" )' fails in the universal UTF-8 code, then 
> just replace with 'boost::fopen', or 'my_special_casing::fopen'.

Yes, exactly. It's not a silver bullet, but... try coming up with a better 
alternative.