Strange behavior of IDE loading a form with non-English characters
lazarus / 9-Editor

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dpap · 2025-03-15 07:25

I'm working on an windows application and I've been encountering this
problem since, when trying to change the class of a component, Lazarus
failed.

The form where the failure occurred and only this one, when I display
it on the screen with F12 has garbage in place of the Greek
characters. Its appearance is delayed a little more than when it
doesn't have this problem, indicating that Lazarus is performing some
additional work.

When I open the .lfm file with Notepad, I see the Greek correctly (is
saved as UTF8, checked with notePad++), but when I go back to design
mode, it looks like garbage.
After trying many possible solutions unsuccessfully, including "clean
and build", deleting the Backup directory and the recompilation of
Lazarus, I did the following with success:
I renamed the two form files after uninstalling them from the
application and created a new empty form with the same name. Then I
copy-pasted the contents of the older ones and the problem is solved.

However, since yesterday I did this and closed Lazarous successfully,
today when I first opened the form it had garbage again instead of
Greek! What could be wrong, please?

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Thaddy · 2025-03-15 07:36

It can be reproduced and the answer is: configure to save with BOM.
The same happens with Cyrillic languages, but I guess it happens to
all scripts that are not western.
I forgot the option, but Lazarus definitely has this option.
Can't test right now. Moving web hosting today, and backing up 25
years of email. ( basically my own ddns)