Unicode - Amharic '\u1200' + === Is it supported. Useful links apprctd

Question

(cross post 'The Java Forum' - it could be my code)
Help with Amharic characters range: \u1200 to \u137F - does any one know if it is supported?
Have tried various calls as the code below shows. Any ideas please.
import java.io.*;
(method) Exception thrown{
   String unicd1 = new String();
   unicd1 = "\u263A\u1213\u1234\u1228";
   //String unicd2 = new String(unicd1.getBytes("iso-8859-4"), "iso-8859-4");
   //String unicd2 = new String(unicd1.getBytes("utf-16"), "utf-16");   //utf-8 fails
   String unicd2 = new String(unicd1.getBytes(),"UTF-8");
   //String unicd2 = new String(unicd1.getBytes("ISO8859-1"), "ISO8859-1");   // ISO8859-9 failsCompilation is OK, thoutput is always;- "????".

Answer 1

Your code is fine, Which one? Any?I'd try UTF-8 or ISO-8859-4 as the target encoding. It should be able to handle things OK from there. Either way, all you'd have to change is the encoding if it doesn't work. I'd just mix and match until it did. ;D
The problem is in how it's being displayed. Ifyou're
getting question marks, it's a safe bet you're
printing to a console window or something, right?erm ... yes, actually
(Swing/AWT usually show a small rectangle instead ofa
question mark)... and yes, tell me am I a 'typical' struggler, or
are you just highly intuitive?Nah, I've just done this stuff waaaay too much for my own good... ;D
What you need to do is ensure that the consolewindow
you are printing is using the same code page (i.e.
ISO-8859-4). Under Windows DOS consoles, you can do
this using the CHCP command.
Erm, what is the CHCP command? And how do you
impelment the printing env 'same code page' - (just
point me to links with sample code please)CHCP is a command under the MS-DOS Prompt in Windows.
It allows you to switch the code page (or encoding) of the MS-DOS Prompt console. CHCP will take the number of a "Cp" encoding and then switch to use the character set that that encoding uses.
What's a "Cp" encoding, I hear you cry? ;)
Back in the dark ages, IBM specified its own set of encodings for foreign alphabets, all of which have names beginning with "Cp" and finishing with a number (e.g. "Cp1252"). Later on, ISO came up with its own standards, which is why most of the encodings we've been talking about so far have "ISO" at the start. There are many places where the character ranges defined by a "Cp" encoding exactly matches an "ISO" encoding, AFAIK. So it's just a matter of finding out which "Cp" encoding covers the \u1200 range.
The list Java works off is the IANA Charset Registry at http://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets - be warned, it's huge and not an easy read, but all the encoding names will be in there. Somewhere. ;)
So for instance if you found that the Cp1234 encoding covers the character range you want to display, you'd head to your DOS prompt, type "CHCP 1234", and then anything you output to that console would display your characters.
You shouldn't have to worry too much about having to output to this "Cp" encoding. If you continue to have your code outputting in Unicode, the console should convert everything OK (i.e. Windows should handle the conversion for you, rather than forcing you to do all the legwork in your code).
If you're outputting to something other than the Prompt, it could get a bit curlier. You'd have to go dredging through the help menus of the program controlling your console to see if you can change the encoding that it displays in. A bit disgusting, but necessary. If all else fails, I think changing Windows' default locale might actually switch the encoding it uses by default to display text in console windows with, though I could be wrong.
Right, now I've thoroughly confused the heck out of you, I'd imagine. All that heavy encoding talk and it's late Friday arvo where I am too... my brain hurts... ;D
Hope that helps!
Martin Hughes