🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi,

this is the first time I'm trying to work with Unicode
and I have some probably very basic questions.
I have read about fonts and languages in the API
but I'm still quite confused about it.

What I'm trying to do:
I want to write a component that has some string
properties that are currently AnsiStrings. Since BCBs
object inspector doesn't seem to support WideString
I thought about adding public WideString properties
such that the user can at least assign Unicode text
in code.
F.e.
public:
   __property WideString CaptionUC...
__published:
   __property AnsiString Caption...

When CaptionUC would be assigned then Caption
would be ignored...
I'm currently developing and testing on a german WinXP.
Assume the user wants to use chinese characters for the caption, f.e.

Questions:

1) Are there any prerequisites I need to draw Unicode text
via the TextOutW API on WinXP and how about Win98?
(The Api docs state that TextOutW is supported on Win98)

2) I have installed several languages like Chinese, Thai, Arabic
etc.. Does this have anything to do with Unicode or is this
only necessary for using multi-byte character mode?

3) Could AnsiString be used to store chinese text (in multi-byte format)?
How about Turkish which has only a few additional characters to
the ANSI set?

4) Can Chinese developers use BCB? I know that
VCL doesn't support Unicode and I know that there are component
collections that do support it. But how would a chinese developer
assign a chinese text in code to a WideString property? Compared
to for example C#Builder the BCB editor does not seem to be able
to store Unicode text in source files.

5) My first test for this was to try to assign a single turkish character
and print it out with TextOutW, f.e.:
  //user code
  WideString w = (wchar_t)0x0130;
  myComponent->CaptionUC = w;

  //in the component (pascal code)
  TextOutW(C.Handle, X, Y, PWideChar(CaptionUC), Length(CaptionUC));

From my Unicode table this should result in a capital 'i' with a dot above.
But all I see is a black rectangle (unknown character???).


I would be grateful for any comments that help me get a little more
insight into the topic. Links and articles also welcome.

thanks,
Nick