RWUNormalizer Class Reference

Converts a string into a particular normalized Unicode form, and detects whether a string is already in a particular form. More...

#include <rw/i18n/RWUNormalizer.h>

Public Types
enum	CheckResult { Yes, No, Maybe }
enum	NormalizationForm { FormNFD, FormNFKD, FormNFC, FormNFKC }

Static Public Member Functions
static RWUString	normalize (const RWUString &source, NormalizationForm form=FormNFC)
static CheckResult	quickCheck (const RWUString &source, NormalizationForm form=FormNFC)
static CheckResult	quickFcdCheck (const RWUString &source)

Detailed Description

RWUNormalizer converts a string into a particular normalized form, and detects whether a string is already in a particular form.

Many text strings can be represented by more than one sequence of Unicode characters. This is because the Unicode standard recognizes two types of character equivalence:

• Canonical equivalence is a fundamental equivalence between characters and sequences of characters. Correctly rendered, canonical equivalents are indistinguishable. An example of canonical equivalence is between the composite character á (Unicode code point U+00E1) and the canonical decomposition formed by the letter a and a combining acute accent symbol (Unicode code points U+0061 and U+0301). Another example of canonical equivalence is between Korean hangul syllables and the jamo characters that compose them.
• Compatibility equivalence is a correspondence between nominal Unicode characters and variants included in Unicode to facilitate round-trip compatibility with other encoding standards. Typically, compatibility characters differ in appearance from their nominal counterparts. For example, the compatibility character \(\frac{1}{2}\) (Unicode code point U+00BD) corresponds to the nominal sequence 1/2 (Unicode code points U+0031, U+2044, and U+0032). Another example of compatibility equivalence is between circled and uncircled versions of characters.

These two types of character equivalence give rise to four normalization forms:

• Normalization Form Decomposed (NFD)

  Composite characters

  are replaced by canonical equivalents, in canonical order. Compatibility characters are unaffected.

• Normalization Form Compatibility Decomposed (NFKD)

  Composite characters are replaced by canonical equivalents, in canonical order. Compatibility characters are replaced by their nominal counterparts.

• Normalization Form Composed (NFC)

  Character sequences are

  replaced by canonically-equivalent composites, where possible. Compatibility characters are unaffected. The W3C generally recommends that strings be interchanged in NFC.

• Normalization Form Compatibility Composed (NFKC)

  Character

  sequences are replaced by canonically-equivalent composites, where possible. Compatibility characters are replaced by their nominal counterparts.

   

Each normalization form produces a unique representation for a given string.

Note that two of the normalization forms, NFD and NFKD, replace composite characters with their canonical decompositions. The other two forms, NFC and NFKC, perform the opposite operation–they replace sequences of characters with canonical composites, where possible.

Also note that two of the normalization forms, NFD and NFC, do not affect compatibility characters. These normalization forms are non-lossy; that is, a string may be converted to NFD or NFC with no loss of information. The other two forms, NFKD and NFKC, replace compatibility characters with their nominal equivalents. As compatibility characters may differ in appearance from their nominal equivalents, information may be lost in converting a string to NFKD or NFKC. In other words, converting to NFKD or NFKC is a lossy operation.

Example

#include <rw/i18n/RWUNormalizer.h>
#include <rw/i18n/RWUConversionContext.h>
#include <iostream>

using std::cout;
using std::endl;

int
main()
{
  // Indicate string literals are encoded according to
  // ISO-8859-1.
  RWUConversionContext context("ISO-8859-1");

  // Use implicit conversion to build a string.
  RWUString str("The French for \"student\" is \"&eacute;l&egrave;ve.\"");

  // Determine whether the string is in NFD form.
  RWUNormalizer::CheckResult result;
  result = RWUNormalizer::quickCheck(str, RWUNormalizer::FormNFD);

  // If necessary, normalize the string.
  if (result != RWUNormalizer::Yes) {
    cout << "Normalizing to NFD..." << endl;
    str = RWUNormalizer::normalize(str, RWUNormalizer::FormNFD);
  } else {
    cout << "String is already in NFD." << endl;
  } // else

  return 0;
} // main

Program Output:

Normalizing to NFD...

Member Enumeration Documentation

enum RWUNormalizer::CheckResult

The quickCheck() and quickFcdCheck() return a CheckResult value to indicate whether a string is in a particular form.

Enumerator
Yes	indicates that the string is in the specified form.
No	indicates that the string is not in the specified form.
Maybe	indicates that the check was inconclusive.

enum RWUNormalizer::NormalizationForm

A NormalizationForm value indicates a particular normalization form, as defined by the Unicode Standard Annex #15, "Unicode Normalization Forms," http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr15/.

Enumerator
FormNFD	Canonical decomposition
FormNFKD	Compatibility Decomposition
FormNFC	Canonical Decomposition, followed by Canonical Composition
FormNFKC	Compatibility Decomposition, followed by Canonical Composition

Member Function Documentation

static RWUString RWUNormalizer::normalize ( const RWUString &  source, NormalizationForm  form = FormNFC  )

static

Converts the characters contained in source into the normalization form specified by form, and returns a new string containing the normalized characters.

When converting a string to any of the normalization forms, normalize() leaves US-ASCII characters unaffected, and replaces deprecated characters. normalize() never introduces compatibility characters.

Exceptions

RWUException

Thrown if there are any errors.

static CheckResult RWUNormalizer::quickCheck ( const RWUString &  source, NormalizationForm  form = FormNFC  )

static

Determines whether source is in the normalization form specified by form. Returns Yes if source is in form, No if source is not in form, and Maybe if no determination can be made quickly.

Exceptions

RWUException

Thrown if there are any errors.

static CheckResult RWUNormalizer::quickFcdCheck ( const RWUString &  source )

static

Determines whether source is in Fast C or D (FCD) form. Strictly speaking, FCD is not a normalization form, since it does not specify a unique representation for every string. Instead, it describes a string whose raw decomposition, without character reordering, results in an NFD string. Thus, all NFD, most NFC, and many unnormalized strings are already in FCD form. Such strings may be collated via RWUCollator without further normalization.

Returns Yes if source is FCD, No if source is not FCD, and Maybe if no determination could be made quickly.

Exceptions

RWUException

Thrown if there are any errors.