Hey, I'm trying to figure out how to display the ▼ character properly in a .NET winform application.
I am creating a custom control, and for the button, I want this character to appear. I am able to set the text to this character, but it appears as a blank square.
Any ideas on what I need to do to make this character appear properly on my forms?
I am using Arial font, which is compatible with this symbol.
EDIT: It is currently being set as follows:
btnCalendarToggle.Text = "▼" 'Yes, it appears exactly like this in my code
More information on the character can be found here:
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/25bc/index.htm
EDIT2: I tried adding some other Unicode characters, and got the following message:
"Some Unicode Characters in this file
cannot be saved in the current
codepage. Do you want to resave this
file as Unicode in order to Maintain
your data?"
After clicking YES on this message, it still didn't work. It appears that the encoding method may be wrong for the file... I don't know what to set it to. Has anyone else tried to display this character in a winform before?
There can often be issues (both with source control systes and diff tools) if you embed more complex unicode characters in source files.
It is often better to do it via an explicit escape sequence and keep the source file in a simpler encoding.
btnCalendarToggle.Text = "\u25BC";
If this works it is likely that the problem is instead the encoding settings for the source file.
Are you certain however that the font in question is Arial (try debugging and checking) since regardless of the above mentioned issues so long as the encoding is set to a legitimate Unicode one (and Visual Studio will convert the file for you if you embed such a character in it) this should have worked.
Can you post the code you are currently using ?
You can print out characters using the chr(int) function if you know the character code.
Dim i As Integer
For i = 0 To 255
txtTest.Text = txtTest.Text & Chr(i) & " -- " & i.ToString() & Environment.NewLine
Next i
Try that and see if your character prints out.
Related
Basically, I need to take a question from a text file and format it as a question would be formatted in a maths exam.
Right now, I'm using PDFsharp to do this but it always saves the alphanumerical symbols (for example, 𝑥) as boxes.
I tried copying from the sample on PDFsharp and have this
Dim document As New PdfSharp.Pdf.PdfDocument
Dim page As PdfSharp.Pdf.PdfPage = document.AddPage()
Dim gfx As PdfSharp.Drawing.XGraphics = PdfSharp.Drawing.XGraphics.FromPdfPage(page)
Dim tf As New PdfSharp.Drawing.Layout.XTextFormatter(gfx)
Dim options As New PdfSharp.Drawing.XPdfFontOptions(PdfSharp.Pdf.PdfFontEncoding.Unicode)
Dim font As New PdfSharp.Drawing.XFont("LastResort", 10, PdfSharp.Drawing.XFontStyle.Regular, options)
tf.Alignment = PdfSharp.Drawing.Layout.XParagraphAlignment.Left
tf.DrawString(questionArray(i)), font, PdfSharp.Drawing.XBrushes.Black, New PdfSharp.Drawing.XRect(0, 0, page.Width.Point, page.Height.Point), PdfSharp.Drawing.XStringFormats.TopLeft)
Dim filename As String = "test" + Str(i).Trim + ".pdf"
document.Save(filename)
Process.Start(filename)
I know I don't need to keep repeating the "PdfSharp.Pdf" stuff, my plan was to clean it all up when I get the characters saving properly.
Last Resort is a font that contains unicode symbols and the mathematical alphanumerical block, according to https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/block/mathematical_alphanumeric_symbols/fontsupport.htm
My end goal is to take a basic .txt file like "f(x) = 5[𝑥^2] + (k+7)𝑥 + k where k is a real constant." and save it to a PDF to resemble a real math exam question.
So, is there a better way to do this or a way to make PDFsharp do it?
Unicode support in PDFsharp works fine for characters in the range 0x0000 to 0xffff as long as you use a font that supports these characters.
Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols are in the range U+1D400..U+1D7FF. You have to patch PDFsharp to make use of them. They are not yet supported out of the box as of today (December 2019).
In your snippet you give "LastResort" as the name of the font. Do you have a font with that name installed in Windows? Can you use it with e.g. Word or WordPad?
Maybe try "Arial" or "Tahoma" or "Verdana" instead.
Do you see the correct strings in the debugger? Maybe the problem is with the formatting of the text file or the encoding used to open it.
Update:
All characters in LastResort look like boxes. No good choice for math exam sheets:
Please try a different font.
I know that similar question has been asked many times before but all I found was about characters up to 2-byte long. I need:
MyString = "📎"
The PAPERCLIP is (U+1F4CE) (http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f4ce/index.htm) and the
ChrW(128206) 'throws an error
HOW to reference the unicode chars longer than 2 bytes?
This is a job that your text editor ought to take care of. My memory of the VBA editor is hazy, I don't recollect any way to force the text encoding of the source code file and trying it quickly with the VBA editor in Excel 2013 looks very unpromising. It turns the utf-16 surrogate pair into two question marks.
Switching to another editor could work, Notepad works fine with the Encoding setting in the Save As dialog forced to "Unicode" for example. But that is hardship, with high odds that the string gets mangled again when you continue editing with the VBA editor. The workaround is to specify the surrogate pair explicitly. Try:
MyString = ChrW(&HD83D) & ChrW(&HDCCE)
Google "utf16 surrogate pair calculator" if you need to do this more than once.
I've come across a character in one of my data feeds, which I have never encountered before
The images above are the data feed in Notepad++ and Notepad view. As you can see it appears as 'BEL' in Notepad++ and a sort of 'bullet point' in Notepad.
How would I go about replacing this character in vb.NET?
I've tried a simple replace in a SSIS Script Task by copying and pasting the character into the replace function, e.g.
text = text.Replace("copy and pasted character", "")
and this gives this error
All help is extremely appreciated,
Thanks
I’ve got no idea what SSIS is but since you wanted to know a solution in VB.NET, the code you’ve tried will work here. That is:
text = text.Replace("copy and pasted character", "")
will work just fine in VB. Alternatively, you can use the following:
text = text.Replace(Chr(7).ToString(), "")
Find out what the Ascii value of the character is and then use the Chr function to eliminate it
i.e.
text = text.Replace(Chr(n), "")
[Bell] is probably character 7
This happens every time I paste a line of code containing a string into Xcode. for example when I pasted this into Xcode:
simonLabel.text = #"Good Job!";
I received an error saying that there was an "unexpeceted '#' in program"
If I delete everything and retype exactly the way I pasted it I do not get an error.
There are too many problems that can appear there:
" can be a different character that you expect
(space) can be a different character that you expect
invisible characters. Something you won't see in the editor at all but they got there with the copy-paste.
All these problems can happen because
You copy it from a website with different encoding (or from a really badly writter website)
You copy it from a smart editor (e.g. MS Word, Open Office) which replaces some of the characters to match locale (e.g. quotation marks) or replaces/add spaces based on grammar and word wrapping (e.g non-breaking space).
I know you can put Unicode character codes in a VB.Net string like this:
str = Chr(&H0030) & "More text"
I would like to know how I can put the char code right into the string literal so I can use Unicode symbols from the designer view.
Is this even possible?
Use the ChrW() function to return Unicode characters.
Dim strW As String
strW = ChrW(&H25B2) & "More text"
The C# language supports this with escapes:
var str = "\u0030More text";
But that isn't available in VB.NET. Beware that you almost certainly don't want to use Chr(), that is meant for legacy code that works with the default code page. You'll want ChrW() and pass the Unicode codepoint.
Your specific example is not a problem, &H0030 is the code for "0" so you can simply put it directly in the string literal.
Dim str As String = "0MoreText"
You can use the Charmap.exe utility to copy and paste glyphs that don't have an easy ASCII code.
Replace Chr with Convert.ToChar:
str = Convert.ToChar(&H0030) & "More text"
To display an Unicode character, you can use following statement
ChrW(n) where n is the number representing de Unicode character.
Convert.ToChar(n)
type directly character in editor using Alt + N key combination
paste/copy Unicode character directly in editor
Char.ConvertFromUtf32(n)
XML String using &#x....; syntax
Example to assign ♥ character :
s = ChrW(&H2665)
s = Convert.ToChar(&H2665)
s = "♥" 'in typing Alt+2665
s = "♥" 'using paste/copy of ♥ from another location
s = Char.ConvertFromUtf32(&H2665)
s = <text>I ♥ you</text>
BUT when Unicode Character is greater than 0xFFFF (C syntax is more readable 😉), only method 4, 5 and 6 are working !
ChrW() function indicates an error at build
Convert.ToChar() function crashes at runtime
Alt+N is refused because it accepts only 4 digits
Example
lblCharacter.Text = "This solution works 😉"
Debug.Print (Char.ConvertFromUtf32(&H1F600))
s = <text>diable: 😈</text>
PS: smiley pasted (0x1F600) directly in Visual Studio code editor or Notepad++ have lost background color ! Explanation: the smiley pasted in this answer is filled by orange color but in Visual Studio editor or Notepad++, this color has disappeared !
To use String literals in Visual Studio Editor, you must use method 3 or 4 !
In Form (Design mode)
In Properties (see Text property)
I was hoping you could use XML literals and XML escapes but it doesn't work. I don't think XML literals allow you to use &#NN;. Although it is a way of including quotes " inside strings.
'Does not compile :('
Dim myString = _
<q>This string would contain an escaped character if it actually compiled.</q>.Value
I use the Character Map utility (charmap.exe). Run and select the characters you want in the control's font, such as ©Missico™, copy then paste into the Text property in the property grid. You will have to change the font because the default font for a form is "Microsoft Sans Serif" which is not a Unicode font. I do not think you can use this method for non-printable characters.
Depending on your needs, you can also use Localization, which creates resource files for each language. Again, you would use charmap.exe to select and copy the characters needed and paste them into the resource file. You probably can use non-printable characters, such as tabs, newline, and so on, since this is just a text file (Unicode).
No, it's not possible since VB strings don't support escape sequences. Simply use ChrW, which is a few characters more to type, but also a bit cleaner.