TIP: Do you want Greek Letters in GFA?

[(X)]

Have you ever wanted to write Pi or Tau or Phi in your program code because it's "cool" to use the actual Greek letters used by scientists and mathematicians?

Apparently, you may only have to select the Greek script in the GFA Code Editor menu: Extra -> Properties -> Font.

I have noticed major difference when choosing a font family or name, for example: Courier vs Consolas.  You will have to evaluate each font individually for the desired outcome because fonts in general are not universally equivalent.

From then on, you should be able to call up the desired Greek letter with Alt+<ascii code> combination.

You may be able to use 2 numerals but 4 numeral including the leading 0's are most consistent.

Sometimes lower numbers without leading 0's map to a higher Extended ASCII value whereas the 4 numeral code

always return the same character.

For example: Extended ASCII 171 corresponds to: ½.  With Consolas Greek Script selected, Alt-171 converts to and displays  Alt-0189: ½.  Therefore, to remain consistent, look-up and use the 4 numeral Zero Leading Alt-Codes instead of the Extended ASCII codes.

In the following code, the form: frm1's font script (or Charset) is changed to Greek - in code - so the symbol for Pi can be printed as a Greek letter on the form.  You can also change a form or other control's font script or charset to Greek in the form editor's Properties -> Font section.

LoadForm frm1
frm1.AutoRedraw = 1
Const Greek = 161
Dim fnt As New StdFont
fnt.Name = "Consolas"
fnt.Charset = Greek
Set frm1.Font = fnt

Dim ð = PI

Print " PI = ð ="; ð­

Do : Sleep : Until Me Is Nothing



Although the Greek letters won't show up correctly in this forum code section, if you have Consolas Greek script setup in the GFA editor then all will appear as expected.

Based on:

www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?665987-Change-font-script-of-label-dynamically

www.unicode-symbol.com/block/Math_Alphanum.html

[(X)]

How can I call-up a popup menu to let me insert Greek characters from a menu instead of memorizing arcane Alt-codes?

The GFA IDE Editor Extension is a POWERFUL utility that is 'built-in' and is accessible via <user defined filename>.GLL files that the user can add-on to his existing GFA IDE Code Editor via the Extra-> Extension Manager menu section (Ctrl-M).

Many programming tasks can be automated or made easily accessible. It's worth mastering this feature to start enjoying the real super-power of computers: "to perform actions with ease, speed, accuracy and intelligence".

From GFA Help: Editor Extension Reference

GFA-BASIC 32 enables you to automate development tasks in the GFA-BASIC 32 development environment. To access the IDE about 130 commands and functions are available. This section describes each command and function.

If you:

1) Add the following code to a new or existing Editor Extension file (<filename>.GLL),

Sub GFA_EX_G ' SHIFT-CTRL-G : Popup lets you select Greek Letter...
Dim i% = PopUp("GREEK LETTERS|" & _
"Alpha|Beta|Gamma|Delta|Lambda|Pi|" & _
"Tau|Mu|Phi|Rho|Theta|Error|" & _
"Sigma|omega|Omega")
Gfa_Insert Choose(i%, _
"á", "â", "ã", "Ä", "ë", "ð", _
"ô", "ì", "ö", "ñ", "è", "±", _
"ó", "ù", "Ù")
EndSub
Although the Greek letters won't show up correctly in this forum code section, if you have Consolas Greek script setup in the GFA editor then all will appear as expected.

2) Recompile it, (Ctrl-E)

Then, via the Editor -> Extension Manager (Ctrl-M)

3) Remove the old version and
4) Add the new version.

Now, when you press: Shift+Ctrl+G a Popup menu will appear, from which you can select your favorite Greek letter to be inserted at the current cursor position.

I know "Error" (±) is not technically a Greek letter but it is often used to indicate the Error margin.

So, now you can see how easy it is to setup any kind of popup menu ready to insert text in the editor or perform a task.  You are practically only limited by your imagination.

[(X)]

I am going to look into the possibility of using Unicode characters for inserting special characters in Label, TextBox and RichTextFormat controls because - unlike the Print to screen statement - I have noticed that they do not seem to care about the font 'charset' or 'script' setting.

These websites seem like a good starting point:

altcodeunicode.com/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows-1252

altcodeunicode.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Windows-ALT-Codes-PDF-Reference-Chart-Free-Download.pdf

fmwww.bc.edu/RePEc/bocode/g/greek_in_word.html

After searching several websites, it is obvious there is no easy solution.

Thankfully, I am in no rush to get this working.

[(X)]

My findings so far... It seems:

1) You can "easily" Print to the form with Greek letters by selecting Greek Script/Charset.
2) You can use Alt+<4 number code> to insert a special character to a Rich Text Format control.
3) .Caption and .Text properties for Label, EditBox or TextBox don't seem to "care" about Charset or Alt+<code> input. So, you are stuck using the "Symbol" font or other font which contain the special characters you want, which makes mixing regular letters with symbols impractical.

As in life when you are young and naive, some systems seem perfect and admirable, that is until you start digging a little. Then you realize Murphy's Law has had a big hand in making sure there are lots of inconsistencies and disharmony - just because they can exist.

There may be a clear dividing line between ANSI and UNICODE compatible controls, but I am struggling to see it.

[jj2007]

Feb 27, 2022 22:12:20 GMT 1 (X) said:

My findings so far... It seems:

1) You can "easily" Print to the form with Greek letters by selecting Greek Script/Charset.
2) You can use Alt+<4 number code> to insert a special character to a Rich Text Format control.
3) .Caption and .Text properties for Label, EditBox or TextBox don't seem to "care" about Charset or Alt+<code> input. So, you are stuck using the "Symbol" font or other font which contain the special characters you want, which makes mixing regular letters with symbols impractical.

As in life when you are young and naive, some systems seem perfect and admirable, that is until you start digging a little. Then you realize Murphy's Law has had a big hand in making sure there are lots of inconsistencies and disharmony - just because they can exist.

There may be a clear dividing line between ANSI and UNICODE compatible controls, but I am struggling to see it.

It's a can of worms, but most Windows API functions dealing with strings have a W (=wide) version, meaning the UTF-16 equivalent of the A (=Ansi) version. Use them.

[(X)]

I have tried to use the W (unicode) version of the API functions and have been able to make some slow progress.

If I understand correctly, GFA provides Wide() and Ansi() to convert from one to the other.

From GFA Help:

Description

Ansi can convert a string with UNICODE characters to ANSI characters.

In most of the cases a wide string is obtained from a Windows API. More and more APIs require wide strings, either as input or for output. GFA-BASIC's string functions expect ANSI (1 byte – 1 character) strings. If the UNICODE string argument includes two null-bytes at the end of the wide string the Ansi function will remove – after conversion – the last null byte that is part of the converted string.

Conversely, the Wide function converts an ANSI string to UNICODE or wide char format.

The wide char format expects two bytes for each character, a format used by more and more Windows APIs. Because Wide strings are most often used with Windows APIs, the function includes two null bytes at the end of the string by default. After conversion the length of the wide string will be Len(ansi) * 2 + 2. Setting the second parameter fNullTerm to False prevents the inclusion of the two null bytes and the converted string will be exactly twice as long as the input string.

[(X)]

I almost forgot about this utility: Charmap.

Here are a few Code Page / Character Encoding explanatory videos:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MijmeoH9LT4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeIBNn5Y5fI