Database Users

converting ASCII to Unicode

hi ther i wonder if you could help me on this simple task. I'm creating a GPS application to run on the XDA2, i'm using eVC++ to do the implementation.
at the moment i'm reading the GPS signal via bluetooth over a virtual COM port, the signal coming from the GPS if a ASCII sinal and i'm duimping this into a char buffer.
However i need to convert this to UNICODE in order to display it on the Pocket PC, how's best to convert a buffer full of ASCII into Unicode so i may display it?
I tried using MultiByteToWideChar(), but it doesn't seem to work properly, maybe i haven't set it up correctly? Could someone point me in the right direction!
Below is an example of what i tried:
Code:
char buf[50]; // contains output from GPS
TCHAR Message[50]; //where i intended to put the message so i could display it
MultiByteToWideChar(CP_ACP, MB_PRECOMPOSED, buf, -1, Message, 0);
Thank in advance

I'm sure it's not the right way to go about it, but I generally wsprintf for short strings.
However, don't listen to me, I'm a mad man. Check this page out instead:
http://www.i18nguy.com/unicode/c-unicode.html
V

Thanks for that, out of curiosity, how would you use wsprintf to convert ASCII to unicode, i tried that before with no real success!

The last value passed to MultiByteToWideChar tells this function the size of the result buffer, Message in your case. You have passed zero, all that does is makes the function return the size of a TCHAR variable it needs to put the Ascii input buf into.
You need to put sizeof(Message) as the last parameter and not zero.
The other way (better way ?) of doing this is first you call the MultiByteToWideChar function with the zero parameter as you have and then you malloc the result * sizeof(TCHAR).

Thanks for the advise, after looking into the function more i realised this is where i was going wrong, and i have now managed to make the conversion. Thanks for pointing that out though!

data type conversion in eVC++

Hello Everyone
I hope this is not too trivial a question. I am new to eVC. I would like to know how to convert from data type LONG to data type CHAR OR STRING in eVC.
Long myLong=1134.67
In VB the conversion will simply be
myString=STR(myLong)
How can I achieve this in eVC++?
Also someone please recommend some good books on eVC++.
Thanks.
ajanaman

evc++ is just like vc++
which is just like c++ with mfc on top of it
to do simple type casts you do
x=(Type)y;
here are some links also included dynamic type casts
http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/typecasting.html
http://www.torjo.com/win32gui/doc/window_casting.html

Hello gsmtexts!
First I would like to point out that in C++ LONG data type is a 4 byte signed integer (in your example you use a floating point value).
Second I assume that by converting you mean representing the number as a string of characters an not just letting the computer assume that the variable contains ASCII values instead of a number.
Here's how you do it:
C++ language doesn't have string data type instead you use an array of char.
Example:
Code:
char myStr[255]; //you have a string of up to 255 ASCII chars.
double myVal = 50.1234; //a double precision floating point value
_gcvt(myVal, 6, myStr); //convert the string
You could use one of the functions (you can search the MSDN site for more details): _gcvt, _ecvt, _fcvt, but there is a simpler way as well:
Code:
WCHAR myStr[255]; //win CE works with Unicode strings.
float myVal = 1.2345; //the value
swprintf(myStr, L"The value: %f", myVal); //creates a string: 'The value: 1.2345'
Finally if you are using MFC:
Code:
CString str;
float myVal = 1.2345;
str.Format(_T("The value: %f"), myVal);
As for books I can only recommend "Teach yourself C++", by Jesse Liberty, it got me started in C++ programming.
Good luck.

Dear levenum
many thanks - I have sratched my head for nearly a week and you gave me the solution just like that. _gcvt did it. u are a wonderful guru.
ajanaman

You are welcome gsmtexts!
But I am far from being a guru. I just like programming so I picked up a book or two and the ball started rolling. 8)
Anyway, since you chose to use _gcvt you should know that in order to use the string you get with windows API's like SetWindowText you will have to convert it to Unicode:
Code:
WCHAR uniBuffer[50]; //Unicode buffer
char myString[50]; //ASCII buffer
_gcvt(1.2345, 5, myString); //convert value to string
mbstowcs(uniBuffer, myString, 50); //convert ASCII string to Unicode

The standard c++ way would be:
double d=122.332;
std:stringstream oss;
oss << d;
std::string mystring=oss.str();

The standard c++ way would be:
double d=122.332;
std:stringstream oss;
oss << d;
std::string mystring=oss.str();

VB.NET how to pass a struct? anyone?

Anyone know how to pass a pointer to a struct in VB.NET that could help me out?
" pGPSPosition
Pointer to a GPS_POSITION structure. On return, this structure is filled with location data obtained by the GPS Intermediate Driver. The dwValidFields member of the GPS_POSITION instance specifies which fields of the instance are valid."
This is from a link on MS site: (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb202050.aspx)
So how do I do this in VB?
Looking for a little love here...
TIA,

WM6 SDK contains the sample with the complete wrapper around the GPS intermediate driver in the managed code
But one warning - on some devices (namely HTC Artemis) the serious bug in some version of code provided by Microsoft to Oem return an error when calling functions this API. Communication with a GPS via serial port is still more reliable for a commercial solutions...

Appreciate the response but do you have any source that I can use with VB? My biggest problem is actually retrieving any information from the GPS device using the "GPSGetPosition" function. (see other link - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=1979418#post1979418)
"But one warning - on some devices (namely HTC Artemis) the serious bug in some version of code provided by Microsoft to Oem return an error when calling functions this API"
Could you be a little more specific?
TW,

Semi manual marshhalling of structure to pointer:
Dim pointerM As IntPtr = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(Marshal.SizeOf(myStruct))
Marshal.StructureToPtr(myStruct, pointerM, False)
Marshal.FreeHGlobal(pnt)
Ad Artemis and another devices) GPS structure has invalid size from old platform builder and intermediate driver (GPS API) refuse it with error.

RStein,
As I was reading about it appeared that Marshaling was going to have to be used in some way since I'm pretty sure that the struct would need to be passed to the C function.
Which brings me to another Q since it appears your are savy at programing in C - how to convert the following C struct?
The struct appears to have a couple of arrays and a few other enums thats are passed to the function, how is that handled in VB?
DWORD GPSGetPosition(
HANDLE hGPSDevice,
GPS_POSITION *pGPSPosition,
DWORD dwMaximumAge,
DWORD dwFlags
);
typedef struct _GPS_POSITION {
DWORD dwVersion;
DWORD dwSize;
DWORD dwValidFields;
DWORD dwFlags;
SYSTEMTIME stUTCTime;
double dblLatitude;
double dblLongitude;
float flSpeed;
float flHeading;
double dblMagneticVariation;
float flAltitudeWRTSeaLevel;
float flAltitudeWRTEllipsoid;
GPS_FIX_QUALITY FixQuality;
GPS_FIX_TYPE FixType;
GPS_FIX_SELECTION SelectionType;
float flPositionDilutionOfPrecision;
float flHorizontalDilutionOfPrecision;
float flVerticalDilutionOfPrecision;
DWORD dwSatelliteCount;
DWORD rgdwSatellitesUsedPRNs[GPS_MAX_SATELLITES];
DWORD dwSatellitesInView;
DWORD rgdwSatellitesInViewPRNs[GPS_MAX_SATELLITES];
DWORD rgdwSatellitesInViewElevation[GPS_MAX_SATELLITES];
DWORD rgdwSatellitesInViewAzimuth[GPS_MAX_SATELLITES];
DWORD rgdwSatellitesInViewSignalToNoiseRatio[GPS_MAX_SATELLITES];
} GPS_POSITION, *PGPS_POSITION;
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had a suggestion to create a library from the C# SDK, how difficult would that be? Would it be easier than trying to convert to VB?
Can you help with that?
Thanks for any feedback...

FastBack Registry Setting? How do you write a DWORD value?

Hello,
After flashing Alcaline's WM6.1 standard ROM for the Wings, I began researching Internet Explorer Mobile.
I came across a very interesting feature called FastBack, however, I don't understand how to write the DWORD value. The value is derived from a LOWORD and a HIWORD. I did some research on those, but can't make much sense out of it and was hoping some of you devs could help out.
Does anyone have any experience working with LOWORD and HIWORD? Can anyone make sense of combining the two to create a DWORD?
Thanks!
Matt

HIWORD * 65536 + LOWORD = what you need.

Koterpillar said:
HIWORD * 65536 + LOWORD = what you need.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply.
So, if I understand correct, to calculate the DWORD that would be the FastBack DWORD value, for 8 pages and 2048KB cache the value would be:
2048 * 65536 + 8 = 134217736
That seems really high. But, that could be correct. FastBack is currently functional with a DWORD value of 8092.
Please confirm.
Also, what could be done about a Forward caching? As in, would it be possible to create some kind of IE mobile add-on that allows you to enter an "Offline caching mode" that will begin to cache forward and back? I'm seriously interested in this as a solution to reading NY Times on the subway.
Thanks,
Matt

[Q] Enabling and locking Timestamps to photos?

Hi, I'm new to XDA Developers but have been using as a valuable resource over the past few months.
We have a HTC Touch Pro 2 device (WM6.5) that we provide support for to a number of personnel. The client have requested that we change the device settings so that photos have the timestamp applied and secondly that it not be possible to take it off again.
Since we have somewhere in the region of 600 devices to update, we'll need to do this via a registry change through our updates service. Try as I might though, I can not find the setting to do either of these. I have searched on here and google and can't find the answer. Has anyone done this before?
Thanks in advance.

I've been doing some digging on this and found a registry key under
HKEY_Local_Machine\SOFTWARE\HTC\Camera\Image
called 'enableStamp'. However, when I change this on Visual Studio 2005 remote registry tool, it doesn't seem to make any difference on the phone, the menu option stays the same. Likewise, the menu doesn't seem to change the registry which leads me to think it's another setting someplace or the settings are stored elsewhere.
Thanks in advance for any help.

I've finally made a breakthrough on this. I had to export the entire registry, change the value, export the registry again and compare the files. I found that this value
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\HTC\Camera\6.16\Preferences
contains a large Hex value string and found that change a value that was 48 (timestamp off) to C8 (timestamp on) was reflected on the device. This string seems to have a lot of values so I'm assuming they are all to do with options selected in the camera menu. I just hope one of them is to disable the timestamp option now. I've posted this here in the hope it helps someone else.