Re: Unexpected encoding issue with _() macro and UTF-8 source in Unicode build (wxWidgets 3.3.1)

Simon Richter <[email protected]> Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:47:37 +0900

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.lib.wxwindows.general
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Hi,

On 11/15/25 00:22, Claudio Fabiano Rossato wrote:

> Is it expected that |_()| still interprets narrow string literals 
> according to the system code page (CP1252) instead of UTF-8, even when 
> the compiler is set to UTF-8?

The argument to _() is a narrow string literal that is used for the 
lookup of the string in the translation database only. In general it is 
assumed to be ASCII text only.

If no entry exists in the database, then the context (if any) is 
removed, this string is converted to wxString and returned from the 
translation function. In Unicode builds, the wxString will consist of 
wxUniChar that can then be converted to the currently active locale's 
representation.

The entries in the translation database are converted from the codepage 
in the translation file to Unicode, then converted to the active locale 
on output.

So any non-ASCII characters must be part of the translation. Quite a few 
projects use an English “translation” to get Unicode quote marks.

For translated strings, there is no other way -- there isn't even a 
guarantee that the file that the translators edit will be UTF-8, e.g. a 
Japanese translator might prepare a .po file using SJIS, and 
representing diacritics on the input strings would be difficult here.

> In other words: in a Unicode build, is using |wxS()| (or |FromUTF8|) the 
> intended and required way when dealing with UTF-8 source files?

In any build, the parameter of _() is a narrow string and the return 
value a wxString that can be output, so you never need wxS() or 
FromUTF8() for a translated string.

    Simon

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