OMGUI is a Unicode library, which is supported by all modern platforms. This creates some complications when it comes to portable string handling. For example, the Windows system uses UTF-16 for its unicode representation, meaning its strings use wide characters (wchar_t). However, GTK+ uses UTF-8 for its unicode representation, meaning its strings use normal chars (char). To allow for efficient implementations on both platforms, string objects in OMGUI will use wchar_t on systems using UTF-16 and char on systems that use UTF-8. This is handled with the
omgui::string typedef, which will be std::wstring on UTF-16 platforms and std::string on UTF-8 platforms.
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While the interface provided by
omgui::string will be identical regardless of what encoding is being used, other tasks may be complicated by having to deal with std::wstring. For example, std::stringstream does not accept std::wstrings; std::wstringstream must be used instead. This is provided for with the
omgui::stringstream typedef, which is std::wstringstream or std::stringstream based on the encoding being used.
Additionally, string literals in your source code need to be handled specially, as std::wstring cannot be initialized from a plain string literal, such as "hello world". It requires a wide string literal: L"hello world". OMGUI proviedes a macro to deal with this, OMGUI_STR, which will evaluate to the string literal on UTF-8 platforms, and a wide string literal on UTF-16 platforms.
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This set of tables outline what encoding is used on which platform and what the various typedefs evaluate to on these platforms.
| Platform |
Encoding |
| Windows |
UTF-16 |
| GTK+ |
UTF-8 |
| Cocoa* |
*: Cocoa itself UTF-16 (right?), but the implementation currently uses UTF-8.
| Encoding |
typedefs and macros |
| UTF-16 |
typedef std::wstring omgui::string
typedef std::wstringstream omgui::stringstream
#define OMGUI_STR(s) L##s
|
| UTF8 |
typedef std::string omgui::string
typedef std::stringstream omgui::stringstream
#define OMGUI_STR(s) s
|
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- See also:
- omgui::string, omgui::stringstream, OMGUI_STR
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