Post by thread:[PIC]: Japanese character conversions

Hi Folks, Has anyone had experiance with exporting Windows programs to run on a Japanese version of Windows? I have a test fixture with a 16F877 and communicating with the com port from a PC. The controlling program is in Visual Basic. The commands sent to the PIC are characters from 0 to 254. The numbers set the RB port bits. It works OK using a US version of Windows but on the Japan unit the bit RB7 does not get set when character 129 and above is sent. I think the Japanese version of Windows is not interpreting the higher characters correcly. I think they use something called DBCS (Double Wide Character Set) which may causing the problem. Thanks for any help. Sandy Phelps __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals. http://personals.yahoo.com -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.

I think the problem may be do to Unicode characters. Many of the VB routines have special versions for byte oriented operations vs. text operations to help avoid Unicode problems. Check out the VB help for Unicode and functions like "InputB" vs. "Input". I recently was playing around with VB for WinCE and I seem to recall having to change things around due to CE always using Unicode characters regardless of the country it is shipped to. Hope this helps, Paul {Quote hidden}> > Hi Folks, > Has anyone had experiance with exporting Windows > programs to run on a Japanese version of Windows? > I have a test fixture with a 16F877 and communicating > with the com port from a PC. > The controlling program is in Visual Basic. The > commands sent to the PIC are characters from 0 to 254. > The numbers set the RB port bits. It works OK using a > US version of Windows but on the Japan unit the bit > RB7 does not get set when character 129 and above is > sent. I think the Japanese version of Windows is not > interpreting the higher characters correcly. > I think they use something called DBCS (Double Wide > Character Set) which may causing the problem. > Thanks for any help. > Sandy Phelps > -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.

Yes, there are several things to watch out for. I went through this with the chinese version of windows. Your first order of business: Replace every string handling function with the byte handling functions wherever you are processing data instead of strings. Change every occurance of mid or mid$ to midb, same with leftb, rightb, and every other string handling function Chang comm control to binary Referring to string arrays as byte arrays "This is NOT an array of bytes, it is an array of characters, which could be single or double byte" (this one was a pain!) There are some knowledge base articles out there about it. Do a lot of searching on the internet about DBCS. You don't really have to worry much about unicode or other variations, since windows uses DBCS and anything you do with DBCS will still work with unicode on NT, etc. I hope this helps! -Adam Sandy Phelps wrote: {Quote hidden}>Hi Folks, >Has anyone had experiance with exporting Windows >programs to run on a Japanese version of Windows? >I have a test fixture with a 16F877 and communicating >with the com port from a PC. >The controlling program is in Visual Basic. The >commands sent to the PIC are characters from 0 to 254. >The numbers set the RB port bits. It works OK using a >US version of Windows but on the Japan unit the bit >RB7 does not get set when character 129 and above is >sent. I think the Japanese version of Windows is not >interpreting the higher characters correcly. >I think they use something called DBCS (Double Wide >Character Set) which may causing the problem. >Thanks for any help. >Sandy Phelps > >__________________________________________________ >Do You Yahoo!? >Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals. >http://personals.yahoo.com > >-- >http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different >ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details. > > > > > -- http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us! email spam_OUTlistservTakeThisOuTmitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body

Hi Sandy, I am using the Japanese windows 2000 and I did the same program ........I wrote a user interface in VB communicating with the PIC 16F877 and displaying the chars. to both the user interface and to the LCD connected to the PIC ....... there was no problem in displaying the chars. but there was a problem in the baud rate of the RS-232 ......if u like I can send u both the user interface and the PIC program(written in C ).... Regards Salah Mohammed, Hugle-Electronics,Development section, Tokyo,Japan. {Original Message removed}

Thanks Adam, I think that is what I'm looking for. It looks like a lot of work and to test the results requires Japanese Windows setup. Thanks to Salah - I'm not sure that your application uses characters over ascii 128. Sandy --- "M. Adam Davis" <.....adampicKILLspam@spam@UBASICS.COM> wrote: {Quote hidden}> Yes, there are several things to watch out for. I > went through this > with the chinese version of windows. > > Your first order of business: > Replace every string handling function with the byte > handling functions > wherever you are processing data instead of strings. > Change every occurance of mid or mid$ to midb, same > with leftb, rightb, > and every other string handling function > Chang comm control to binary > Referring to string arrays as byte arrays > "This is NOT an array of bytes, it is an array of > characters, which > could be single or double byte" > (this one was a pain!) > > There are some knowledge base articles out there > about it. Do a lot of > searching on the internet about DBCS. You don't > really have to worry > much about unicode or other variations, since > windows uses DBCS and > anything you do with DBCS will still work with > unicode on NT, etc. > > I hope this helps! > > -Adam > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals. http://personals.yahoo.com -- http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList piclist-unsubscribe-requestKILLspammitvma.mit.edu