Develop Reference

How to show emoji in c# console output?

I have a problem in output emoji in console.
String starts with Unicode flag "\u" works well, like "\u263A".
However, if just simply copy and paste an emoji into string, like "🎁", it does not work.
code test below:
using System;
using System.Text;
namespace Test
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.OutputEncoding = Encoding.UTF8;
string s1 = "🎁";
string s1_uni = "\ud83c\udf81"; // unicode code for s1
string s2 = "☺";
string s2_uni = "\u263A"; // unicode code for s2
Console.WriteLine(s1);
Console.WriteLine(s1_uni);
Console.WriteLine(s2);
Console.WriteLine(s2_uni);
Console.ReadLine();
}
}
}
s1 and s1_uni can successfully be outputted while s2 and s2_uni failed.
I want to know how to fix this problem.
By the way, the font applied is 'Consolas', which works perfectly in Visual Studio.
Update:
Please note that, I've done some searches in stackoverflow before I present this question. The most common way is to set the Console encoding to utf-8, which is done in the first line of Main.
This way (Console.OutputEncoding = Encoding.UTF8) can not totally fit the situation I presented.
Also, the reason why I make supplement to the console font in the question is to declare that Consolas font works perfectly in showing emoji in VS but failed in console. The first emoji failed to show.
Please do not close this question. Thanks.
Update2:
this emoji can be shown in the VS terminal.
Update3:
Thank Peter Duniho for help. And you are right.
While we are discussing, I look through the document MS Unicode Support for the Console.
Display of characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane (that is, of surrogate pairs) is not supported, even if they are defined in a linked font file.
Code point of the emoji can't be shown in the console is just outside the BMP. And console does not support show code point outside BMP. Therefore, this emoji is not shown.
To change running context which may support this emoji. I did some experiments.
CMD:
Power Shell:
Windows Terminal:
You can see, windows terminal supports it.
Strictly speaking, the problem I met is not a duplicate question in stackoverflow. Because my code just did whatever can be done to meet the requirement. The problem is the running context, not code.
Thank Peter Duniho for help.

The current Windows command line console, cmd.exe, still uses GDI+ to render text. And the GDI+ API it uses does not correctly handle combining/surrogate pair characters like the emoji you want to display.
This is true even when using a font that includes the glyph for the character you want, and even when you have correctly set the output encoding for the Console class to a Unicode encoding (both of which you've done in your example).
Microsoft appears to be working on improvements to the command prompt code, to upgrade it to use the DirectWrite API instead of GDI+. If and when these improvements are released, the console window should be able to display your emoji correctly. See Github issue UTF-8 rendering woes #75
In the meantime, you can run your program in a context that is able to render these characters correctly, such as Windows Terminal or PowerShell.
Additional details regarding the limitations of the GDI+ font rendering can be found in Github issues Add emoji support to Windows Console #190 and emoji/unicode support mostly broken in windows #2693 (the latter isn't about a Windows component per se, but still relates to this problem).

Xamarin/Mono crashes on Japanese input, Mavericks OSX

I just started using Xamarin with existing windows C# code. Running Mavericks.
It seems to work great until I try to enter Japanese text in a text box.
HIToolbox crashes - looks like it's trying to convert NSNotFound from 64bit MAXINT to the 32bit MAXINT... and of course... you can't do that.
Does anyone have a workaround? or a fix? or a suggestion?
I tried different Japanese input methods, and different fonts in the box, but... same result.

GhostScript printing Parameters

I am having big problems trying to print a PDF file in Windows using Ghostscript. The 'in Windows' argument comes from the fact that I am trying to use MS Windows default driver for this '-sDEVICE=mswinpr2'. I need all windows printers/drivers support. Also I can not use the PDF to images then to print job kind of solution. I cant use the gswin64c.exe file also, and I need that the job is done without any popups (no form of any kind). All I can do is just to send some parameters to gsdll32.dll and it to create a print job.
I am using C# wrapper
https://github.com/mephraim/ghostscriptsharp/tree/master
I am sending the following parameters: "-dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dNOPROMPT -dDEVICEWIDTHPOINTS=612 -dDEVICEHEIGHTPOINTS=792 -dFIXEDMEDIA -dPDFFitPage -sDEVICE=mswinpr2 -dQUIET -sOutputFile=\"%printer%Epson Stylus Pro 4900\" D:\1.pdf"
And every time the printer selection dialog keeps popping up. I understand that the order the parameters are in matters .... because I changed it and it had different results.
Actual Question:
What parameters do I have to send to GhostScript dll so that I can print a PDF file using the default MS Windows printing driver.

Have you tried this using the command line version of GS instead of the DLL or C# thingy ? I'd suggest you concentrate on getting that to work first.
What is the name of the printer (as it appears in Windows) ?
What version of Ghostscript are you using ?
Try using the command line without '-dBATCH', '-dNOPAUSE', '-dNOPROMPT', '-dQUIET'. that way if Ghostscript tries to tell you something you won't just ignore it or miss it.
If the command line works then; I see you've escaped the " characters, but not the '%', you might want to escape those, or double them up. Depending how this wrapper of yours works they might be getting read as format specifiers.

The parameters used in the command line have been verified first in the command line version gswin64c.exe (64 bit operation system) and they work fine.
I am using GS version 9.10 (latest version).
I've tried different combinations of parameters, with or without some of them ... same result ... -100 exit code (general fault with no specification of the error that caused it).
It doesn't seem to be a problem with that % character... I'll try some more things.
Thanks Ken for the help

As far as the printer dialog popup is concerned, if you replace "mswinpr2" with the a compatible device name such as ljet4, the prompts would go away. My guess is that your computer must be having more than one printer installed and hence windows prompts for you to choose one from the list.

How to integrate the scan barcode option on my WinCE application?

I'm new to the CE environment, I'm creating an application for a mobile computer with a barcode scanne that uses Windows CE 5.0 (Motorola mc3000).
I'm using VS 2008 and I'm programming with C#.
I made a litte demo project that it runs successfully on the device. My application have a scan task so it need to use the Barcode reader: Access to the scan hardware, make it run, read the returned result and display it into a textBox!
The problem is that I don't know how to integrate the scan part into my application.
Any help on this?

Well, first step would be to look in the documentation for the Motorola MC3000. I don't know if there is one for the MC3000 but I know that in the Motorola EMDK for .Net they provide quite a few sample C# VS2008 projects and a couple of them are for barcode reading.

Kobunite has posted you the first step. So go to the download page of the Motorola EMDK an watch the examples. After that you have to reference the Symbol.dll and Symbol.Barcode.dll in your project (local copy = true). Then you can begin to write your "barcode-class" with an event-handler for the scan-event. When a barcode is scanned via the hardware-trigger the event will throw an then you can place the barcode-string in your focused textbox or do something else with it (e.g. filtering in a datagrid). Hope this helps.

Just to simply scan a barcode there is a much easier solution.
By default the barcode scanner should also output into the keyboard cache.
To test it simply open a text editor and scan a barcode. If the barcode appears then you are good. You can simply use a normal textbox and make sure focus is on it.
The problem is however that you need a terminator. The easiest solution is to append the Carriage return symbol to any scanned value. Most handheld devices have a utility somewhere where you can append characters to scan. Appending '\r' (without quotes) works for most devices.
This means that you don't have to do a single thing extra on your code. Just make sure the textbox support keyboard input and starts processing when enter is pressed.
Motorola uses the utility called DataWedge. Here is a link to it's manual (PDF file). Look at page 5 for carriage return and line feed. DataWedge Manual (old but should still help)
The main advantage is that it allows the user to also use manual input in case the barcode is damaged. The disadvantage is that you lose the barcode metadata (i.e. barcode encoding type, etc.) But this is not required 99% of the time anyway.

C# Unicode (Japanese Characters)

I have a Japanese final coming up soon, so to help me study I made a program to help me study. But, I can't seem to get VS2008 to display any Unicode in the Console. This is a sample I used to see if I could display Unicode:
string diancai = new string(new char[]{ '\u70B9','\u83DC' });
Console.Write(diancai[0] + " " + diancai[1]);
Output is:
? ?
Please help! Thank you!

Go to your command prompt and try a command "chcp"
It should be like this
C:\> chcp
現在のコード ページ: 932
932 is japanese, If code page is not correct or if your windows does not support, It can't display it in console.
I can run yours in mine, its display following chars, mine is japanese windows.
点 菜
So, For your case, I recommand you to try with GUI program instead of console

There are two conditions that must be satisfied in order for this to work:
The console's output encoding must be able to represent Japanese characters
The console's font must be able to render them
Condition 1 should be fairly simple to deal with; just set System.Console.OutputEncoding to an appropriate Encoding, such as a UTF8Encoding. (Of course, this won't work on Windows 9x, since that doesn't really support encodings or Unicode. But you aren't using that, now, are you?)
Satisfying condition 2 is a bit more involved:
First, an appropriate font must be installed on the user's system. If there aren't any installed yet, the user will have to install some, perhaps by:
Opening intl.cpl ("Regional and Language Options" in the Control Panel on Windows XP in English)
Going to the "Languages" tab
Enabling "Install files for East Asian languages"
Clicking "OK"
Actually getting the console to use such a font seems to be fairly hairy; see the question: How to display japanese Kanji inside a cmd window under windows? for more about that.

I use Windows XP english version.
But I set my OS so it can show Japanese characters.
For Windows XP this is the step:
1.Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> Advanced
2.Choose Japanese.
3.Choose code page conversion tables for language do you use.
4.Push OK button
5.Restart your computer.
I tried to use "chcp" command on command prompt.
It display: Active code page 932