Consider the following program: 
use strict;
use warnings;
use utf8;
use Tk; 
${^WIDE_SYSTEM_CALLS}= 1;
my $s= "This is a TM symbol => '\x{2122}',\nU+2122";
my $MW = new MainWindow; 
my $hello = $MW->Button( 
    -text    =>  $s,
    -command => sub {print STDOUT $s; } ); 
$hello->pack; 
MainLoop;

[download]
Running this under Windows 2000, the character is not shown on the button (nor is a square default character indicating that it's not in the font—and this character should be in all normal Windows fonts). Rather, I see three characters â (E3), unprintable, and ¢ (A2). Clearly it is interpreting the UTF-8 encoding as 3 8-bit characters instead.

Is Tk simply UTF8 hostile? If the string for the button is going through the normal mechanism that the core uses, it would convert to UTF-16 and call the Wide form of TextOut (or SetText or whatever) upon seeing the WIDE flag set.

Is it possible to use Unicode with Tk with the right incantations? Any plans for the future?

—John

In reply to Unicode in Tk by John M. Dlugosz

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