DOCUMENT:Q193540  01-OCT-1998  [vbwin]
TITLE   :HOWTO: Read and Display UNICODE String on Visual Basic Form
PRODUCT :Microsoft Visual Basic for Windows
PROD/VER:WINDOWS:5.0,6.0
OPER/SYS:WINDOWS
KEYWORDS:

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The information in this article applies to:

 - Microsoft Visual Basic Professional, and Enterprise Editions for
   Windows, versions 5.0 6.0
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SUMMARY
=======

This article demonstrates how to read a Unicode string from a Unicode text
file and display the string on a Visual Basic form.

MORE INFORMATION
================

Visual Basic is based internally on the double-byte Unicode standard.
However, most of the world outside of Visual Basic still uses the single-
byte ANSI model. For this reason, Visual Basic provides two sets of form
controls and uses the ANSI set as the default control. Any strings passed
to the ANSI set of form controls will be converted from their internal
Unicode representation to an ANSI representation and will not display the
UNICODE strings correctly. To be able to display the UNICODE string on a
Visual Basic form, the UNICODE (Forms 2.0) controls must be used. The
following example shows how to use the Forms 2.0 controls to display
UNICODE strings read from a Unicode text file. Because this behavior
requires UNICODE language package support, it currently supported only in
Windows NT.

Step-by-Step Guide to Build Sample
----------------------------------

1. Install the Chinese language package on your Windows NT computer. See
   the REFERENCES section below for installation instructions. The MingLiu
   font will be installed automatically during this step. You can also
   install other language packages if you want to use other UNICODE
   language support.

2. Create a standard EXE project. Form1 is created by default.

3. Select Components from the Project menu and check "Microsoft Forms 2.0
   Object Library." Several new controls are added to the toolbox,
   including UNICODE versions of the text box, label, etc.

4. Add a Forms 2.0 TextBox to Form1 and keep its default name: TextBox1.
   Set the font of the text box to be MingLiu.

5. Add two CommandButtons to Form1.

6. Add the following code to the code window of Form1:

      Private Sub Command1_Click()
        ' create a Unicode text file with Chinese character
        ' Dan1 and English character D.
        Dim a(0 To 5) As Byte
        a(0) = &HFF
        a(1) = &HFE
        a(2) = &H39
        a(3) = &H4E
        a(4) = &H44
        a(5) = &H0
        Open "unicode.txt" For Binary As #1
        Put #1, , a
        Close #1
      End Sub

      Private Sub Command2_Click()
        Dim txtline As String

        ' you may need to change the path of the file
        Open "unicode.txt" For Binary As #1

        txtline = InputB(2, #1)  ' always FF FE, skip them
        txtline = InputB(4, #1)

        Close #1

        TextBox1.Text = txtline  ' display the string
      End Sub

   Note that the UNICODE text file always begins with the Bytes FF FE,
   which is why you need to skip these two bytes. Also note that to read
   UNICODE strings from a file, the file needs to be opened as binary and
   read using InputB.

8. Run the application. Click Command1 to create the Unicode text file.

9. Click Command2. The Chinese character Dan1 and the English character D
   will be displayed correctly in the text box. You can also check the
   unicode.txt file by using notepad with MingLiu font.

REFERENCES
==========

For additional information, please see the following article in the
Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q177561
   TITLE     : HOWTO: Add and Enable Additional Languages in Windows NT

Additional query words: kbDSupport kbDSD DBCS kbVBp kbVBp500 kbVBp600
kbCtrl kbUnicode
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Version           : WINDOWS:5.0,6.0
Platform          : WINDOWS
Issue type        : kbhowto

=============================================================================

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