Console Unicode support, and a little Hillel....

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2011/08/18 07:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2011/08/18/10196878.aspx

Just the other day Igor asked me:

Hi Michael,
As a globalization expert, I’d like to ask you : can I say that “Command line does not support Unicode input” in Windows?

I know it has some restrictions, e.g., it does not support  BiDi, and the OEMCP should be set to according to the ACP for CJK.

However I can type in Russian and see the text correctly  if I switch to Unicode font on En-US OS with the same system locale.

I suppose I could have responded with a link dump -- a list of various links from the Blog.

Or I could have just told him to search for CMD himself or whatever....

But instead this time I gave a quick, abbreviated response:

Well, the console can support Unicode, but:

  1. No complex script support
  2. No font substitution
  3. Some console apps don't support Unicode even though the could
  4. 1 and 2 can be fixed by using the PowerShell ISE

Sometimes it's best to teach the Torah while standing on one foot....

John Cowan on 18 Aug 2011 9:29 AM:

If I don't Unicodify my apps, who will?  And if I do Unicodify my apps, what does that make me?  And if not now, when?

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