Using
International Characters
by
ptolemy
Ever tried importing text from an external
file that contained international characters just to find
that when testing your SWF, the accents and special
characters didn't render properly or even at all? Well, for
those of you who have, I feel your frustration. But there is
no longer any need to fear as I have discovered a simple yet
effective solution to this plague!
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Format and Encoding of the External
File
Formatting rules of a file containing variables with
international characters are more strict than usual. This
may seem a little strange but things will make sense later
when I show you how to import the file into your SWF.
The first thing to know is that your file must begin
with the following line of code:
//!-- UTF-8
n.b.: It is important to conserve all spaces as
demonstrated
The second thing is to make sure your variables are properly
declared. Unlike a file without international characters,
the code
myvar = j'étire mes jambes
will have your SWF complaining that you
have a syntax error. The reason for this is that we will
make use of the #include function to import our
variables. Because #include parses syntax-sensitive
code, we must format our file like so:
myvar = "j'étire mes jambes";
It makes sense to do things this way and
in fact, I prefer declaring variables this way - it just
makes things cleaner.
Encoding
Unlike the norm, files containing international characters
must be saved using UTF-8 encoding. I know for
a fact that this can be done with Notepad but I'm confident
that any text editor can do this as well. To save a file
with UTF-8 encoding in Notepad, simply select Save-as
and change the Encoding-type to UTF-8. That's
it.
So to recap on formatting, here's how a 'well-formed' text
file would look like:
//!-- UTF-8
myvar = "j'étire mes jambes";
Importing your International Text file into Your SWF
I am assuming that you already know how to properly setup a
dynamic textfield to recieve external data so if you are
unsure about this, take a look in the forums and you will
surely find an answer.
Now this couldn't be easier. Instead of using the usual
loadVariables() function, we will use the #include
command. Let's say the file that contained the text we
wanted in our dynamic textfield was located in the file
c:/temp/test.txt. We would then put the following line in
the movie clip (or _root) where the textfield existed:
#include "c:/temp/test.txt"
n.b.:
I intentionally omitted the semi-colon from the end of
the line. Flash will complain that you have a malformed
#include statement if you decide to do otherwise.
The Easier Method
According to Macromedia,
System.useCodePage=true;
will ensure that all international
characters will be properly rendered. I tried this with MX
and it works fine. Go ahead and read how to do it the long
way below but now that I know this method, I'm sticking with
it!
And that's
it. Simple huh? I know how much frustration this caused me
and am just glad now to have a solution. I hope this was as
relieving to me as it was to you.
Cheers,
ptolemy |
