Linking VST plug-ins to Unicode applications

Developer VST 3 SDK
1

I am a software developer working on a product that uses VST plug-ins.

The previous version of our product is compiled using the ANSI character set. When it displays VST plug-ins, they look fine. However, the new version of our product is compiled using the Unicode character set. When it uses VST Plug-ins, many of the labels appear garbled (they look like some Asian characters).

So I have a few questions:

  1.   How do we modify our application to make VST Plug-ins display correctly?

  2.   Should we direct our customers to find VST Plug-ins that have been compiled as Unicode?

  3.   Are VST3 plug-ins be compatible with our application?

Refer to the attached screen shot.
VST Screen Shot.png

2

VST3 strings are UTF-16 encoding:

typedef char16 TChar; ///< UTF-16 character

__wchar_t on Windows or char16_t in C++11

you have to be sure to implement a correct conversion or a correct Windows function for your display.

3

Thanks for your reply Yvan.

I’m not sure exactly what you mean when you say, “you have to be sure to implement a correct conversion or a correct Windows function for your display.”

Here is my understanding of what is happening:

  1. My application calls a VST DLL.
  2. The VST DLL (which was created by some other company) displays a dialog.
  3. After the user has used the dialog, the dialog posts back any changes to the audio.

So how can my application change the text that is displayed in step 2? Do VST DLLs call back to the application before they display each piece of text?

Doug