Hi, Tk appearing in Chinese font spurred a memory of a question that went unanswered on comp.lang.perl.tk. Someone posted the script below, and wanted to know, why the Chinese was displayed properly if read in as variables, but it wouldn't work reading from DATA. If any of you unicode experts know the answer, please enlighten us. The are 2 subs below for testing, comment out "method1" and try "method2" to see the difference.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use Tk;

my %codes_hash;
my $mw = new MainWindow;

#works fine when hard coded, but not from DATA 
#so method1 is good, method2 is'nt working 
&define_codes_method1;
#&define_codes_method2; 

foreach my $language ( 'English', 'Chinese', 'Japanese', 'Malay' ) {
    $mw->Label( -text => $language, -font => 'arial 12 bold' )->pack;
    foreach my $code ( sort keys %codes_hash ) {
        $mw->Label(
            -text => "$codes_hash{$code}{$language} ($code)",
            -font => 'arial 12',
        )->pack;
    }
    $mw->Label( -text => '-' x 30, -font => 'arial 12' )->pack;
}

$mw->geometry('+100+100');

MainLoop;

sub define_codes_method1 {
    %codes_hash = (
        100 => {
            English  => "Contactor Repair",
            Chinese  => "\x{4FEE}\x{593E}\x{8173}",
            Japanese => "PB\x{4FEE}\x{7406}",
            Malay    => "Membaiki Contactor",
        },
        120 => {
            English  => "Change Cleaning Disk",
            Chinese  => "\x{66F4}\x{63DB}\x{786C}\x{789F}",
            Japanese =>
"\x{30AF}\x{30EA}\x{30FC}\x{30CB}\x{30F3}\x{30B0}\x{4EA4}\x{63DB}",
            Malay => "Menukar Cakera Pencuci",
        },
        130 => {
            English  => "Server/Network Problem",
            Chinese  => "\x{7DB2}\x{8DEF}\x{554F}\x{984C}",
            Japanese =>
"\x{30CD}\x{30C3}\x{30C8}\x{30EF}\x{30FC}\x{30AF}\x{306E}\x{30C0}\x{30
+A6}\x{30F3}",
            Malay => "Masaalah Server/Rangkaian",
        },
        140 => {
            English  => "Waiting on Support",
            Chinese  => "\x{5F85}\x{4FEE}\x{6A5F}\x{4EBA}\x{54E1}",
            Japanese => "\x{30B5}\x{30DD}\x{30FC}\x{30C8}\x{5F85}\x{30
+61}",
            Malay    => "Menunggu Sokongan Teknikal",
        },
    );
}

sub define_codes_method2 {
    my $language;

    while (<DATA>) {
        chomp;
        next if !/\S/;

        if (/^%language=(.*)/) {
            $language = $1;
        }
        else {
            my ( $code, $descr ) = split /,/;
            $codes_hash{$code}{$language} = $descr;
        }
    }
}

__DATA__
%language=English
100,"Contactor Repair"
120,"Change Cleaning Disk"
130,"Server/Network Problem"
140,"Waiting on Support"

%language=Chinese
100,"\x{4FEE}\x{593E}\x{8173}"
120,"\x{66F4}\x{63DB}\x{786C}\x{789F}"
130,"\x{7DB2}\x{8DEF}\x{554F}\x{984C}"
140,"\x{5F85}\x{4FEE}\x{6A5F}\x{4EBA}\x{54E1}"

%language=Japanese
100,"PB\x{4FEE}\x{7406}"
120,"\x{30AF}\x{30EA}\x{30FC}\x{30CB}\x{30F3}\x{30B0}\x{4EA4}\x{63DB}"
130,"\x{30CD}\x{30C3}\x{30C8}\x{30EF}\x{30FC}\x{30AF}\x{306E}\x{30C0}\
+x{30A6}\x{30F3}"
140,"\x{30B5}\x{30DD}\x{30FC}\x{30C8}\x{5F85}\x{3061}"

%language=Malay
100,"Membaiki Contactor"
120,"Menukar Cakera Pencuci"
130,"Masaalah Server/Rangkaian"
140,"Menunggu Sokongan Teknikal"
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