Re: std::cout << Glib::ustring(utf8_literal) throws exception

[Sohail Somani <sohail taggedtype net>]

Murray Cumming wrote:
> On Sat, 2008-07-12 at 19:15 -0700, Sohail Somani wrote:
> > Yes, you are right. Copying the ustring to a std::string gets rid of the 
> > error but still doesn't work right because it is interpreted as ASCII in 
> > the console.
>
> std::cout does not understand UTF-8. That's why glibmm tries to do a
> conversion (with the Glib::convert_*() functions. That's documented by
> the way:
> http://www.gtkmm.org/docs/glibmm-2.4/docs/reference/html/classGlib_1_1ustring.html#_details
>
> But I don't know why the conversion is failing in your case. Maybe it's
> a problem with the glib installation on windows.

Ok, I've figured out the cause of the problem.

operator<< calls the g_convert function with from_codeset = "UTF-8" and 
to_codeset = "CP1252".

Obviously, only some characters can be translated from UTF-8 to code 
page 1252 which is some European code page. So when glib calls the 
underlying Windows API conversion function, it correctly barfs.

If anyone is a Windows guru (quite possibly the wrong list to ask this 
question!), I'd appreciate an idea of how I can set my code page so I 
can still have an English desktop but can convert to/from UTF-8 in a 
lossless manner.

Thanks for your help.

Sohail