Unicode characters not showing in System.Windows.Forms.TextBox

Question

These characters show fine when I cut-and-paste them here from the VisualStudio debugger, but both in the debugger, and in the TextBox where I am trying to display this text, it just shows squares.

说明\r\n海流受季风影响，3-9 月份其流向主要向北，流速为2 节，有时达3 节；10 月至次年4 月份其流向南至东南方向，流速为2 节。\r\n注意\r\n附近有火山爆发的危险，航行时严加注意\r\n

I thought that the TextBox supported Unicode text. Any idea how I can get this text to display in my application?

Answer 1

You need to install and use a font which supports those characters. Not all fonts support all characters. the [] box character is the fonts representation of 'unsupported'

The textbox might be using MS Sans Serif by default, so change it to Arial or something else.

Answer 2

I changed from using a TextBox to using a RichTextBox, and now the characters display in the RichTextBox.

Answer 3

I was facing similar problem.

It was problem with reading file properly and not with TextBox control.

StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(inputFilePath, Encoding.Default, true)

Copied from THIS.

Works for me and that too without switching to RichTextBox.

Answer 4

Did you add Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false); to your main.cs file? If not, the unicode characters won't show.

Answer 5

Microsoft Sans-Serif does support unicode characters to my knowledge. Check that you have these lines of code in your main.cs file:

Application.EnableVisualStyles();
Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);