Visustin - Character set options

Options

Supported character sets
Western European
Central European
Baltic
Turkish
Greek
Cyrillic
Hebrew
Arabic (Editor/Visio only)
Thai
Vietnamese
Korean (바탕 Batang)
Chinese Simplified
Chinese Traditional
Japanese
Others: limited support

Visustin supports a wide range of character sets and source file encodings. Options are available through Font options and Source encoding options.

Visustin can read the following code:

Naturally, support is limited to those code pages and scripts for which you have support in Windows. You can enable support in the Windows Control Panel, Regional Options. For best coverage, run Windows XP or later.

Font character set (Script)

The font script is important for the display of national characters. You select it via the Font setting in the Options menu. Visustin defaults to the Windows default script, but you can choose any other. In the following picture, the Cyrillic script is selected for displaying Cyrillic characters.

Font options

The correct Script is important. It controls all of the following features:

Tip: If you have trouble displaying national characters, try the following fonts:

Source encoding

The Source encoding option controls the loading of source files. This setting lets you load DOS and Mac code, as well as EBCDIC and UTF-7 encoded source files into Visustin. Use this setting when loading non-default file encodings.

Source encoding options
Setting Character set Usage
Automatic (default) Auto-detected

This setting loads most code, including Windows code. Automatic determines the character set from the current font script (see above) or the file itself (when possible). Automatic mode also works with Unicode, UTF-8 and UTF-32 encoding.

To keep Automatic mode working best, have the correct font script selected.

DOS System default DOS character set Load legacy DOS code. Uses the system default DOS codepage, such as 437 for US English.
Mac System default MacIntosh character set Load Mac code. Uses the system default Mac codepage.
Other Any supported codepage Other allows you to select a specific encoding (codepage or character set). This setting is useful when the Automatic mode is not giving the correct results. As an example, you can load Cyrillic DOS code while running a West European Windows. Also choose Other to load EBCDIC or UTF-7 code.

Source encoding only affects loading code from a source file, either via the File|Open menu command or Drag & Drop from the Windows Explorer. The Source encoding setting has no effect on Copy & Paste. For Paste, Visustin accepts the Clipboard contents "as is" without trying to convert the text.

Really quick introduction to codepages

Instructions to display national characters

Visustin supports national characters automatically. With national characters we mean characters other than ASCII 0-127, such as Ä, Æ, þ, Ω, Ж, ش, 兒 or 하.

The automatic settings work when your code is in the same character set as your system. That means, the display is fine for Japanese characters on a Japanese Windows and Cyrillic characters on a Russian Windows.

Flowcharting code in a different character set requires some settings, though. The following instructions are for Japanese. They also work for Cyrillic, Central European, Chinese, Korean, Hebrew, Arabic, Baltic, Greek, Vietnamese, Turkish etc.

Step 1: Choose Font

  1. Set Options|Source encoding to Automatic (the default).
  2. Select Options|Font and choose an appropriate font and the correct script. In this case, select a font with a Japanese script.
  3. Load some code.

If the code doesn't display correctly, proceed to step 2.

Step 2: Specify Source encoding

  1. Select an appropriate character set in Options|Source encoding. For DOS code, first try DOS. For Mac code, first try Mac. For anything else, choose Other. Select an ANSI codepage for Windows code.
  2. Verify the font script matches the Source encoding.
  3. Load some code.

Step 3: Change system locale

If you cannot get national characters to show up, your system may not be configured to display them. You need to change the system locale. If your code contains Japanese characters, try the Japanese locale. — To select another system locale in Windows XP, log in as Administrator, go to Control Panel, Regional Options, Advanced and set Language for non-Unicode programs.

Improvement notice. Versions prior to Visustin v5 had display problems with national characters other than Western European characters. The problems have been fixed.

See also

Options

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