Autohotkey - how to store unicode and use it? - unicode

Question

Here's my code below. AHK file is saved as UTF-8 with BOM and I can see the unicode characters just fine whenever I paste it into the script. But everytime I save the script and re-open it, the unicode characters become question marks and random gibberish characters. When "sendinput" is run, the output also comes out as question marks and gibberish, instead of the actual unicode emoticons.
MyVarEmoticon =
(Ltrim
What is your choice? (Enter #):
1. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
2. (┛ಠ_ಠ)┛彡┻━┻
3. (╯°Д°)╯︵/(.□ . \)
4. ┏━┓┏━┓┏━┓ ︵ /(^.^/)
)
InputBox, MyVarEmoticonChoices, Emoticon Choices, %MyVarEmoticon%, , 400, % HEmoticon(MyVarEmoticon),,,,,1
HEmoticon(MyVarEmoticon)
{
StringReplace, MyVarEmoticon,myvaremoticon,`n,`n,UseErrorLevel
Lines:=ErrorLevel+1
height:=lines * 30 ; play with this value !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
;MsgBox % height
If (Height < 40) ; too low
Height+=80
Return height
}
if ErrorLevel {
;MsgBox, CANCEL was pressed.
} else {
if (MyVarEmoticonChoices = "1"){
MyVarEmoticonChoices = (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
}
if (MyVarEmoticonChoices = "2"){
MyVarEmoticonChoices = (┛ಠ_ಠ)┛彡┻━┻
}
if (MyVarEmoticonChoices = "3"){
MyVarEmoticonChoices = (╯°Д°)╯︵/(.□ . \)
}
if (MyVarEmoticonChoices = "4"){
MyVarEmoticonChoices = ┏━┓┏━┓┏━┓ ︵ /(^.^/)
}
WinGetPos, X, Y, Width, Height, ahk_exe ToW.exe, , ,
XVar = %X%
YVar = %Y%
WVar = %Width%
HVar = %Height%
XWVar = % XVar+39
YHVar = % YVar+682
Sleep,200
sendinput, {raw}%MyVarEmoticonChoices%

Answer 1

Although there are some quite weird things in this code, it seems to work as expected if saved with the correct encoding.
I can't really know what goes wrong when you're trying to save it, maybe try to explain the steps you take to save it in the editor you're using.
If you don't want to worry about file encoding, you could store the characters as code points for example.
You can find a quick little converter with a Google search, here is the one I landed on with a Google search:
http://unicode.scarfboy.com/?s=%28%E2%95%AF%C2%B0%E2%96%A1%C2%B0%29%E2%95%AF%EF%B8%B5+%E2%94%BB%E2%94%81%E2%94%BB
And then you can convert to the code points to characters with Chr().
For example:
emote := "0028 256F 00B0 25A1 00B0 0029 256F FE35 0020 253B 2501 253B"
for each, codepoint in StrSplit(emote, " ")
output .= Chr("0x" codepoint)
Clipboard := output
SendInput, ^v
And here I'm also utilizing the clipboard and sending Ctrl+v, which is a good trick if you can use it. Especially for long text, which this really isn't I guess, but I figured I'd show it.
Or if you want to Send the string, you can use the Unicode notation:
emote := "0028 256F 00B0 25A1 00B0 0029 256F FE35 0020 253B 2501 253B"
for each, codepoint in StrSplit(emote, " ")
output .= "{U+" codepoint "}"
SendInput, % output
;SendInput, % "{U+0028}{U+256F}{U+00B0}{U+25A1}{U+00B0}{U+0029}{U+256F}{U+FE35}{U+0020}{U+253B}{U+2501}{U+253B}"

Answer 2

In ahk script files you must choose UTF-16 LE BOM Encoding to support Unicode characters. That's a Microsoft Windows default behaviour which indicates all other encodings as ASCII.