UIInput and special characters on Linux

[Christian Illy]

Hi there,

when using UIInput for e.g. chat input it does not allow to enter characters like german umlauts (ä, ö, ü) scandic letters or stuff like that. This *does* work fine with GUI.TextField though. Also only happens on our Linux builds, Windows builds are not affected (can't say right now if Mac builds are, don't have one to test).

Any idea what's wrong? Is it something on our end or NGUI itself?

Unity 4.5.5p4
NGUI 3.6.4

Regards,
Chris

[Christian Illy]

Sorry, posting timed out, got double post
Please delete this one

[ArenMook]

Works on Windows, doesn't work on Linux? Sounds like a Unity bug. I haven't heard of Windward gamers reporting this, but then again I don't think many of them use custom localization + Linux.

[Christian Illy]

But as I said Unity-Inputfields work fine so I was wondering if there was a difference how input is recorded.
Also you don't need any custom localization, having a chat in game is enough to notice that input doesn't allow those characters I think more or less every non-english language has some of them so it's really annoying for those people
So you're sure there's nothing you can do on this subject?

[ArenMook]

NGUI grabs text from Input.inputString. GUI.TextField uses events coming from Unity internally. It's an internal component used in OnGUI. There is most certainly a difference.

[Christian Illy]

Just found this older topic when searching Google for this issue: http://www.tasharen.com/forum/index.php?topic=3045.0

According to Unity docs Input.inputString only works for ASCII characters. Reality is that on Windows it seems to work for any character, MacOS and Linux it indeed only allows ASCII.
There's also a Unity Answers entry for this issue: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/232610/non-ascii-characters-in-inputinputstring-in-osx.html

Just wondering: In the hope to get a feedback from UnityTech, is it better to post on Answers or on the official Forum in your experience?

Regards,
Chris

[ArenMook]

From my personal experience, Unity employees very rarely respond to posts as Unity Tech simply doesn't have the manpower necessary to give any kind of dedicated support due to its massive user base. Remember, Unity's devs are paid to add new stuff, not answer questions of hundreds of thousands of users. 99.999% of all responses come from the community. That said, some newer features when they get released do get quite a bit of love from the employees who added them as they do want to make sure that they work as intended.

So to sum up the answer: Unity Answers is the better place, but don't expect a response from Unity themselves.

[Christian Illy]

Ok, thanks
Actually searched around the Unity stuff and found these entries later on yesterday. Maybe it's of interest for you as it basically makes the UIInput rather limited use on Mac/Linux when it's used by non-english people
Unity Answers entry: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/232610/non-ascii-characters-in-inputinputstring-in-osx.html
Unity Issues entry: http://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/input-dot-inputstring-doesnt-work-properly-with-unicode-characters

Unfortunately the issue is closed. Will this be seen anyway or is it better to open another?

[ArenMook]

Well, the status is "fixed in Unity 4.5". Can you confirm that that's the case? If not, I suggest resubmitting using Unity 4.5+, ideally 4.6.X

[Christian Illy]

We're running 4.5.5p4 for a while now and it's still in there. Reported a bug with that version, hope they'll fix this too
Will report if/when they put that on the issue tracker.

[Christian Illy]

Forgot to add this here: Acknowledged by UT (though nothing appears to be done so far):
- http://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/input-dot-inputstring-only-reporting-ascii-on-linux
- http://fogbugz.unity3d.com/default.asp?693367_nr4ek15kud628oum

[Christian Illy]

Aaaaand said to be fixed in 5.1.0p1.

[Christian Illy]

It's fixed with 5.1.0p1 but that one broke the rest of the Input system on Linux. 5.1.1p3 now finally seems to be fully working regarding Input