Displaying non UTF-8 8 bit character codes with writefln()

[Regan Heath]

Stewart Gordon wrote:
> "Regan Heath" <regan at netmail.co.nz> wrote in message 
> news:fe5d88$15l$1 at digitalmars.com...
> <snip>
>> 1. avoid the valid utf-8 cahracter check.
>> 2. make the console display utf-8 correctly.
>>
>> To achive #1 you've gotta use printf, eg.
>>   printf("%c\n", 230);
> 
> No I gottan't.  I could use putchar, puts or OutputStream.writeString 
> for example.

Sure, except the OP wanted formatting.  End of the day, as long as you 
know what you're doing using printf isn't going to kill you.

> <snip>
>>> This misses the point slightly.  The user shouldn't have to change 
>>> the codepage just to get someone else's application to work properly.
>>
>> Sadly, if the application is outputting UTF-8 you don't have a choice.
> 
> But how many DOS or Windows console apps in the real world output UTF-8? 

Everything written in D using writefln from phobos ;)

Even if you're only outputting ASCII characters (a subset of UTF-8 - as 
I'm sure you know) you have the ability to output the full range of 
UTF-8 codepoints and really we need a console which can handle that.

> Presumably not many, considering that no versions of DOS and only a few 
> versions of Windows support it.  There's also a causal loop in that even 
> modern Windows versions don't come with the console code page set to 
> 65001 by default.  I don't know what is likely to break this loop, but I 
> doubt that the restrictiveness of one language's standard library is 
> going to do it.

True.  I wonder what the vista console defaults to?  Are they still 
using local code pages or are they using UTF-8 or UTF-16 (perhaps more 
likely)

>>> What you want is my utility library:
>>> http://pr.stewartsplace.org.uk/d/sutil/
>>
>> Cool.  You're converting UTF-8 to the console code page I assume.
> 
> Exactly.  (Well, as exactly as is possible under the constraints.)

:)

Regan