Question

In attempting some work with ncurses I’ve come to the point where I need to use wide characters, for box drawing, but also for other stuff, and I’m in a situation where per-tile control is useful.

However, when attempting to use the following code, I get into trouble:

#define _XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED

#include <locale.h>
#include <curses.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>

#define ESC 27

int main() {
  setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "");

  initscr();
  keypad(initscr(),1);
  curs_set(9);
  nonl();

  cchar_t special;
  setcchar(&special, L"æ", 0, COLOR_PAIR(0), NULL);

  cchar_t speshul;
  setcchar(&speshul, L"朝", 0, COLOR_PAIR(0), NULL);

  int c=0;
  do {
    clear();

    mvadd_wch(3,6, &special);
    mvadd_wch(4,6,&speshul);

    refresh();

  } while ((ESC!=(c=getch())));

  endwin();
}

Edit:

Having updated the code to use setcchar; the output is disheartening:

?

A single question mark where special should be, and nothing where speshul should be.

Neither character shows up as expected.

Where is the problem, and how can I fix it?

Edit: Some extra info in response to Petesh:

The expected result is the printing of the character “æ”, and underneath it, 朝. I’m using Terminal.app on Mac OS X; and I’m compiling it Xcode.

Answer 1

The devil, as it turns out, is in the details.

It turns out my problem was the call to locale:

  setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "");

It should read:

  setlocale(LC_ALL, "en_US.UTF-8") // or similar

Setting that fixes the issue, and the characters now display correctly.