# Escaping non-ASCII chars for RTF export **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [November 1, 2007, 11:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/escaping-non-ascii-chars-for-rtf-export/118991 "2007-11-01T23:51:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dan\_Herrera](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/a8b319/32.png) [@Dan\_Herrera](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Dan_Herrera)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2007, 11:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/escaping-non-ascii-chars-for-rtf-export/118991/1 "2007-11-01T23:51:09Z")
Greetings, I’m attempting to convert non-ASCII characters to unicode escape sequences for export to RTF, and I haven’t had much luck finding any good information searching google. Anyone here have any good resources for this sort of thing? Thanks! dan ---
**Author:** ![Dan\_Herrera](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/a8b319/32.png) [@Dan\_Herrera](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Dan_Herrera)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 1:15am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/escaping-non-ascii-chars-for-rtf-export/118991/2 "2007-11-02T01:15:51Z")
[http://ruby-rtf.rubyforge.org/](http://ruby-rtf.rubyforge.org/) Ruby RTF library. Creates RTF documents… might be a good start. ---
**Author:** ![Dan\_Herrera](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/a8b319/32.png) [@Dan\_Herrera](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Dan_Herrera)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 4:18am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/escaping-non-ascii-chars-for-rtf-export/118991/3 "2007-11-02T04:18:11Z")
On Nov 1, 5:14 pm, removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid wrote: > [http://ruby-rtf.rubyforge.org/](http://ruby-rtf.rubyforge.org/) > > Ruby RTF library. Creates RTF documents… might be a good start. Hi, thanks for taking a look at my problem. I am using the Ruby RTF library currently to generate RTF files. The trouble I’m running into is with strings like ‘gør’. When you add that ø character, it doesn’t get converted to it’s unicode counterpart and the result is mangled when viewed. Thanks again for your help, dan ---
**Author:** ![Dan\_Herrera](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/a8b319/32.png) [@Dan\_Herrera](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Dan_Herrera)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 9:46am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/escaping-non-ascii-chars-for-rtf-export/118991/4 "2007-11-02T09:46:02Z")
Dan Herrera wrote: > On Nov 1, 5:14 pm, removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid wrote: > > > [http://ruby-rtf.rubyforge.org/](http://ruby-rtf.rubyforge.org/) > > > > Ruby RTF library. Creates RTF documents… might be a good start. > > Hi, thanks for taking a look at my problem. > > I am using the Ruby RTF library currently to generate RTF files. The > trouble I’m running into is with strings like ‘g�r’. When you add > that � character, it doesn’t get converted to it’s unicode counterpart > and the result is mangled when viewed. A unicode has to be converted into a character language(called an ‘encoding’) that your display device can understand before the character can be displayed. Common character languages(or ‘encodings’) are ascii and utf-8. It sounds like the string you are starting with is encoded in a character language that your display device doesn’t understand. Therefore, you need to figure out what character language your display device does understand. utf-8 is pretty common, so you can start off trying to convert your strings to the utf-8 character language, and then see if the strings will display correctly. But to convert your strings to utf-8, you need to know the current character language that the string is written in. If you don’t know the current language, you can start off by trying ISO-8859-15. The characters that make up the ISO-8859-15 language are listed here: > **[ISO/IEC 8859-15](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8859-15)** > > ISO/IEC 8859-15:1999, Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 15: Latin alphabet No. 9, is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 1999. It is informally referred to as Latin-9 (and for a while Latin-0). It is similar to ISO 8859-1, and thus also intended for “Western European” languages, but replaces some less common symbols with the euro sign and some letters that were deemed necessary: Thi IS... To convert from ISO-8859-15 to utf-8, you can do this: str = “Hell\xf6 w\xf6rld” #\xf6 is ‘o’ with umlaut in ISO-8859-15 puts str –output (which my display device shows me):– Hell? w?rld #I see question marks instead of o’s with umlauts Therefore, my display device does not understand the IS0-8859-15 character language. Since I want my display device to display the o’s with umlauts, I’ll try converting the string to the utf-8 character language: require ‘iconv’ #‘Internationalization converter’? converter = Iconv.new(‘UTF-8’, ‘ISO-8859-15’) new\_str = converter.iconv(str) puts new\_str –output:– Hellö wörld #I see o’s with unlauts ---
**Author:** ![Dan\_Herrera](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/a8b319/32.png) [@Dan\_Herrera](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Dan_Herrera)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 10:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/escaping-non-ascii-chars-for-rtf-export/118991/5 "2007-11-02T22:21:06Z")
Dan Herrera wrote: > This is great information, it’s really helped me move in the right > direction. > > Thanks! There is one missing piece to the puzzle. This is what happens behind the scenes when you convert from a string written in UTF-8 format to a string written in ISO-8859-15 format: UTF-8 encoded character | | V Unicode integer | | V ISO-8859-15 encoded character If for some reason, you ever need to get the unicode integer, you can do this: str = “\xc3\xb6” #‘o’ with umlaut encoded in utf-8 arr = str.unpack(‘U’) #‘U’ gets the unicode from a char encoded in _utf-8_ only p arr #[246] --\> unicode in decimal format Since unicode integers are usually written in hex format, you can do the following to get the unicode in hex format: puts “%04x” % arr[0] #00f6 ---
**Author:** ![Dan\_Herrera](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/a8b319/32.png) [@Dan\_Herrera](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Dan_Herrera)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 7:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/escaping-non-ascii-chars-for-rtf-export/118991/6 "2007-11-02T19:23:47Z")
On Nov 2, 1:46 am, removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid wrote: > > that ? character, it doesn’t get converted to it’s unicode counterpart > > trying to convert your strings to the utf-8 character language, and then > > str = “Hell\xf6 w\xf6rld” #\xf6 is ‘o’ with umlaut in ISO-8859-15 > > require ‘iconv’ #‘Internationalization converter’? > > converter = Iconv.new(‘UTF-8’, ‘ISO-8859-15’) > new\_str = converter.iconv(str) > puts new\_str > > –output:– > Hellö wörld #I see o’s with unlauts Hi, This is great information, it’s really helped me move in the right direction. I haven’t done enough testing yet, but here is what has seemed to work. Using an Iconv solution, where str is the string to convert.: require ‘iconv’ converter = Iconv.new(‘ISO-8859-15’, ‘UTF-8’) converted\_str = converter.iconv(str) So a little backwards from what we were thinking. Looks like swapping UTF-8 and ISO-8859-15 did the trick since it appears that the string was in UTF-8 to begin with. Thanks! dan