[cairo] Accented characters and guimette

[Maarten Bosmans]

2010/10/9 Nev Delap <nev.delap at intelestream.net>:
>
> Hi there,
> I am using Cairo in a Mono application on Linux where it works perfectly.
> I'm running the application on Windows (exact same code running in Mono
> still).
> My problem is that running on Windows when it either does
> context.TextExtents() or context.ShowText() with guillemets or characters
> with accents, no subsequent output is producted. It doesn't get an
> exception, doesn't write anything to the console, it just doesn't draw
> anything more on that context.

So you are using Cairo's "toy" font api. This mainly meant for some
quick-n-dirty placement of text on a surface. For any advanced text
uses (international characters would fall under that), pango is
recommended.

> This is only on Windows, on Linux no problem.
> So, I want to ask is it a known problem, if so, is there any workaround, if
> not is there something you can suggest to help me track down something
> useful to provide you for debugging? And if I made a minimal Mono
> application that works on Linux and shows the problem on Windows would you
> be able to use that?

It's certainly possible that some stuff works on Linux, but as the api
is only meant for extremely simple text drawing, there's no guarantee
it works on all platforms.

> Thanks,
> Nev

Pango (pango-sharp) is perfectly usable with mono. I use it myself in
an app, running on .NET in Windows and mono on Linux.

Maarten