What limitations does the Windows console have regarding Unicode?

Question

It is possible to write Unicode characters to the Windows console using the WriteConsoleW function. On my Windows 7 machine, it looks like the console does not support chara

Answer 1

Windows console is limited to Basic Multilingual Plane

Your link to WriteConsole function says nothing about usable console characters:

• lpBuffer [in] A pointer to a buffer that contains characters to be written to the console screen buffer.

But what is that buffer? Simple Google search for writeconsole lpbuffer structure gives (indirect) link to the CHAR_INFO structure:

Syntax (C++)

typedef struct _CHAR_INFO {
  union {
    WCHAR UnicodeChar;
    CHAR  AsciiChar;
  } Char;
  WORD  Attributes;
} CHAR_INFO, *PCHAR_INFO;

But what is WCHAR UnicodeChar? Again, a simple Google search for windows wchar gives link to Windows Data Types:

• WCHAR A 16-bit Unicode character. For more information, see Character Sets Used By Fonts. This type is declared in WinNT.h as follows: typedef wchar_t WCHAR;

And finally, above Character Sets Used By Fonts link gives next ultimate consequence: Windows console is limited to Basic Multilingual Plane, i.e. 16-bit Unicode subset:

Unicode Character Set

… To address the problem of multiple coding schemes, the Unicode standard for data representation was developed. A 16-bit character coding scheme, Unicode can represent 65,536 (2^16) characters, which is enough to include all languages in computer commerce today, as well as punctuation marks, mathematical symbols, and room for expansion. Unicode establishes a unique code for every character to ensure that character translation is always accurate.