[python-win32] Re: Unicode style in win32/PythonWin

[Roger Upole]

This approach could present problems for some functions on
Win98/ME.  A lot of the unicode functions are implemented
as stubs, returning some form of "not implemented".
If an application was passing unicode to a function and it
was getting converted to character in order to call the *A
form of the function (as many do now), it would suddenly stop
working if the *W function was called instead.

One solution might be to do a separate release for 98, linking
all the projects against unicows.lib, which translates all the *W
calls to the equivalent *A function.  However, this would
require anyone using Pywin32 on Win98 to have unicows.dll
installed.  (and would also be more work for Mark)
Of course, you could always just drop support for 98/ME.
(hint hint)

           Roger

Mark Hammond wrote:
>> ok. I have no patches so far as of now - maybe later. Played with
>> Heller's ctypes for my urgent needs. That works correct with unicode
>> like this:
>>
>> >>> import ctypes
>> >>>
>> ctypes.windll.user32.MessageBoxW(0,u'\u041f\u043e\u0448\u0443\u043
>> a.txt',0,0)
>> 1
>
> In general, the "ascii" win32 functions will actually take MBCS encoded
> strings.  So:
>
>>>> import win32api
>>>> win32api.MessageBox(0, u"Here is a \xa9 symbol".encode("mbcs"), 
>>>> "title",
> 0)
>
> Displays a message box with a copyright symbol.  You should find this true
> for pretty much all win32 functions.  Many functions will actually still
> allow you to specify a unicode string directly and automatically convert 
> to
> MBCS, but MessageBox doesn't get this behaviour as it still uses
> PyArg_ParseTuple with the 's' format char.  (Not surprisingly, MessageBox
> was one of the very first functions added to win32api, which was the very
> first win32 module :)
>
> This only falls apart when you need to represent a unicode character not 
> in
> the user's codepage, but that is rare.
>
> As you mention, the correct thing for this function to do is automatically
> use the W function when either of the string args are unicode - as usual,
> patches gratefully accepted :)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mark
>
>
>