How to display Japanese characters in a Linux Wine message box text?

Question

<<If this question is better posted on Ubuntu or Superuser sites, please let me know.>>

I am building a Windows application on Debian Linux (stable) that runs with Wine.

To begin, I wrote a very simple "Hello, World!" application. It works very well for an English caption and text. However, if I add Japanese text to the caption and text, only the caption correctly displays the Japanese text. The text inside the Windows message box uses Unicode substitution characters (empty rectangles). I Google'd so hard, but I cannot find the answer to this issue. :(

My simple C source code:

/* Working with Strings: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/learnwin32/working-with-strings */
/* Ref: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7424383/what-is-the-difference-between-the-a-and-w-functions-in-the-win32-api */
/* Ref: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4143110/what-encoding-win32-api-functions-expect */
#define UNICODE 1

#include <windows.h>

int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance,
                   HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,
                   LPSTR lpCmdLine,
                   int nCmdShow)
{
    /* Ref: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/nf-winuser-messagebox */
    MessageBoxW(NULL,                                               /* [in, optional] HWND    hWnd      */
                TEXT("Hello, world!  ようこそ東京！"),              /* [in, optional] LPCTSTR lpText    */
                TEXT("ようこそ東京 | This is a MessageBox title"),  /* [in, optional] LPCTSTR lpCaption */
                MB_OK | MB_ICONINFORMATION);                        /* [in]           UINT    uType     */
    return 0;
}

I compile this code as: $ x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc -o ./hello-world.exe ./hello-world.c
I run this code as: $ wine ./hello-world.exe

Output looks like this:

The caption displays correctly, but the message box text does not.

My locale looks like this:

$ locale
LANG=en_HK.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_HK:en
LC_CTYPE="en_HK.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_HK.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_HK.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_HK.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_HK.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_HK.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_HK.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_HK.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_HK.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_HK.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_HK.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_HK.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

I also tried this command, but no improvement: $ LC_ALL=ja_JP.UTF-8 wine ./hello-world.exe

What is the trick to make this work? I assume it is: (a) a missing #define, (b) a missing Debian package, (c) a missing environment variable.

Related question: Would my sample code work on native Win 7 or Win 10?

I also tried:

winetricks allfonts but no improvement.

It's probably (d): Your source character set isn't what you or your compiler thinks. — IInspectable, Feb 14 '22 at 15:59
@IInspectable Great suggestion! As I provided the compiler command, do you know what env var setting that I am missing? — kevinarpe, Feb 14 '22 at 16:38
@YangXiaoPo-MSFT Thanks for the feedback! I'll to raise the issue with Debian and/or Wine teams. If I find a solution, I will post here as an answer. — kevinarpe, Feb 15 '22 at 07:10

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 17 '22 at 16:37

This answer is the result of further research, so I am answering my own question.

The default font for Message Box Text is probably Tahoma. According to this font database (https://catalog.monotype.com/family/microsoft-corporation/tahoma), Tahoma does not support Japanese.

On recent versions of Microsoft Windows, the default Japanese font is now Meiryo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiryo

Run: winetricks allfonts
Run: winecfg
Select tab Desktop Integration
Select item Message Box Text
Click button Font
Select a Japanese font, e.g., Meiryo

Now, the message box can correctly display Japanese text.

How to display Japanese characters in a Linux Wine message box text?

1 Answers1