QCAD 3 RC4 Greek Text Incopatibility

[eaneonakis]

I have downloaded the demo editition of RC 4 on Windows XP, and opened a dxf file with some greek text but the text is incomprehensible. The dxf was created with qcad 2.2.2 demo version. If I try to modify the text with the edit tool, the text is garbage in the text tool window too.
The font used was unicode.
A file created in qcad 3 is also not properly displayed in qcad 2.2.2
Files created with qcad 2.2.2 are properly displayed in community edition in Linux
I would gladly upload example files.
I am very happy that version 3 supports windows fonts and dwg files.
I hope you find some time to see to this matter.
Thank you very much.

[clive]

I have downloaded the demo editition of RC 4 on Windows XP, and opened a dxf file with some greek text but the text is incomprehensible. The dxf was created with qcad 2.2.2 demo version. If I try to modify the text with the edit tool, the text is garbage in the text tool window too.
The font used was unicode.
A file created in qcad 3 is also not properly displayed in qcad 2.2.2
Files created with qcad 2.2.2 are properly displayed in community edition in Linux
I would gladly upload example files.
I am very happy that version 3 supports windows fonts and dwg files.
I hope you find some time to see to this matter.
Thank you very much.

Hi eaneonakis
When you open up a file from 2.2.2 in Version 3 first of all save it again in version 3 with the appropriate format, then try working on it!

You need to work between the two with compatible/same formats if possible.

Version 2 and version 3 are different applications, so for example you can have both installed and 'running' side by side on your computer, however there are new features and improvements made in Version 3 so working between the two applications may result in some 'not' perfect results!

[eaneonakis]

Hello and thank you.
Unfortunately what you suggest does not make any difference.
What is the appropriate format to save in in my case?
Furthermore, it seems that qcad 3 has problems with greek text in general, even with its own files: while text displays properly when created, when you save the file and open it again it displays as garbage.
In version 2.2 unicode was supported properly although some characters are missing from unicode.cxf
Also qcad3 can not open font files, that feature will be missed by those in need of characters not included in the default fonts - I have added to unicode.cxf some of the missing characters.
Thank you very much

[clive]

Hello and thank you.
Unfortunately what you suggest does not make any difference.
What is the appropriate format to save in in my case?
Furthermore, it seems that qcad 3 has problems with greek text in general, even with its own files: while text displays properly when created, when you save the file and open it again it displays as garbage.
In version 2.2 unicode was supported properly although some characters are missing from unicode.cxf
Also qcad3 can not open font files, that feature will be missed by those in need of characters not included in the default fonts - I have added to unicode.cxf some of the missing characters.
Thank you very much

Agreed - after trying out some tests myself, I have encountered similar results. 3 RC4 is a release candidate still being tested out here by us users, so for now it might be worth you using the 'stable' 2.2 version of QCAD if you need it for productive work. You can like me continue to test and use Version 3RC4 also.

You can add your findings/bugs here:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/bugtracker/

You will need to register to use the bug tracker, you can also use it to add/re-add feature requests - such as 'opening font files'. I`m sure Andrew will appreciate your feedback!

Hope this helps

Clive

[andrew]

Furthermore, it seems that qcad 3 has problems with greek text in general, even with its own files: while text displays properly when created, when you save the file and open it again it displays as garbage.

How do you reproduce this?

My test case is:
- Create a text "Ελλάδα" with font "Arial" (TrueType)
- Create a text "Ελλάδα" with font "Unicode" (CAD font)
- Save as DXF 2010
- Load

This seems to work fine, so I am unable to reproduce this problem. If you have any files that demonstrate the issue, feel free to e-mail them for testing, thanks!

[eaneonakis]

Hello Clive and Andrew,
I have tried Andrew's test case, I confirm that on my system (Windows XP) the text is not displayed properly when the drawing is closed and the reopened.
I will glady post the files, please explain how I do it.
Thank you very much.

[clive]

Having tried this on my 'Home computer' (windows 7 -64) I can say Andrew that yes this does work as per your test case, apologies - but for whatever reason I cannot get this working properly at work (vista), not sure why, I`ll keep playing about with this some more and I`ll try to remember to send you a file for testing.

[demkpap]

First the good news: I work in an environment where everybody else is using windows and I am the only one to use linux for 5 years now. So far, I was kind of feeling disappointed because I could not use autocad which I need occasionally since I am an engineer and the free version of QCAD or librecad are too inefficient. Now with qcad 3.0 (bought a few days ago) I feel the gap closed since I can work together with everybody else on an equal basis. So in ubuntu linux 11.10 and 12.10 everything runs smoothly, and I am very happy with qcad.
However, when I try to use qcad on a windows computer, I came across the same problem as eaneonakis above. In windows XP when I save a drawing with greek letters, the letters become scrambled on reopening the drawing from the same computer. It seems as the qcad imports the data with a different code page that it exports it. I played around with Control Panel -> Regional Setting and I discovered that when in the "Advanced" tab I use an English setting this problem disappears and qcad works as expected. However, when "English" is used (and not "Greek") the user cannot open the files with greek names, so the user has to have "Greek" in that setting.
Unfortunately I have access only to computers running XP (sp 2 or 3) so I cannot test the qcad in other versions.
Somehow I feel this is an easy problem to solve in qcad.

[demkpap]

Continuing from my previous post, it seems that the greek letters written by qcad (from a wndows xp computer) in a dxf file, are written in windows 1253 encoding as verified by opening the dxf file with a text editor. From the linux machines are written in utf-8 encoding.