Proper way to add a list of strings that include words with accents to a RichEditText box

Question

I am trying to add a list of strings that contain special characters such as accents to a RichEditText box. To be exact, it is list of peoples names. Some are in French & Spanish for instance. Unfortunately, these special characters are showing up incorrectly.

I am currently do the following:

aRichEditTextBox.Lines = nameList.ToArray();

For instance... Instead of "Añazgo", I am getting this "A�azgo".

What is the proper or best way to fix this issue?

Can you check the nameList content before assigning it to RichEditText box and be sure that it has "Añazgo"? — Ali Ihsan Elmas, Mar 15 '21 at 18:27
Yes, sure, so the source is a text file. Which is the encoding used to write to this file? `Encoding.Default`? Can you post a sample of this file? - Or, open the file in Notepad, see whether you can read it correctly, then save it using UTF-8 as the Encoding — Jimi, Mar 16 '21 at 22:24
@AliIhsanElmas, I know what the data looks like because it is being read from a text file into a List. When looking at the list items in the debugger, I am seeing the accents in the names of the individuals listed in the List. — Samario, Mar 16 '21 at 22:25
@Jimi... here is a sample of what is in the text file. Añazgo, Carlos Deza, Silvia Garcia, Tomás Reyes, José Suárez, María — Samario, Mar 16 '21 at 22:43
That's not what I asked and suggested. Open the file in Notepad and save it as UTF-8. Then try again. Remember to use a Font that contains those characters. — Jimi, Mar 16 '21 at 22:44
Right. From now on, only use UTF-8 to store text. If you don't, you can read it in your Computer, most probably, others cannot read it correctly (or at all) in other machines that use a different Language and CodePages. Building a software, you cannot consider the Local Encoding as a valid encoding for text. UTF-8 can render Unicode CodePoints of any Language and is interpreted everywhere. — Jimi, Mar 16 '21 at 22:53
@Jimi, thanks for the help! The text file is not one created by me and is being provided by someone else. This means I will have to add code to convert the text file first to UTF-8 before adding the names to my sting list. — Samario, Mar 16 '21 at 22:59
Ah, well, sure. Then, read the source text specifying the Encoding used (it should be CodePage 1252), then save it all with `File.WriteAllText([Path], [Text])`. The default Encoding in .Net is UTF-8, so you don't need to specify the encoding when saving text. — Jimi, Mar 16 '21 at 23:02

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 16 '21 at 08:00

you have to use an RTF format for the richtextbox to recognize those special character, use this method that came from here - RichTextBox and special chars c#

static string GetRtfUnicodeEscapedString(string s)
{
    var sb = new StringBuilder();
    foreach (var c in s)
    {
        if(c == '\\' || c == '{' || c == '}')
            sb.Append(@"\" + c);
        else if (c <= 0x7f)
            sb.Append(c);
        else
            sb.Append("\\u" + Convert.ToUInt32(c) + "?");
    }
    return sb.ToString();
}

richtextbox1.Rtf = GetRtfUnicodeEscapedString(TextString);

Proper way to add a list of strings that include words with accents to a RichEditText box

1 Answers1