cannot print chinese by roslog

[DinnerHowe]

hi, there: We found ROS cannot print Chinese by c++, like" 我是新手 ". For instance, ROS_INFO(" 我是新手 "), the result is [ INFO] [1512552131.271037807]: ???????????? However, in python ROS could print Chinese well. Is this issue caused by pointer? like: const char m in void console_bridge::log(const char file, int line, LogLevel level, const char* m, ...) @wjwwood

[scpeters]

maybe we need to use std::wstring in the API?

[DinnerHowe]

yes, i think so. also, i tried input a wstring to ROS_INFO, it cannot pass catkin make yet:

    std::wstring aa;
    aa = "我是新手";
    ROS_INFO(aa);

the error is error: invalid conversion from ‘const char*’ to ‘wchar_t’ [-fpermissive]

[ghost]

Anyone knows solution ?

[scpeters]

I just added a small test case in console_bridge to print Chinese characters, and it appears to work for me: https://github.com/scpeters/console_bridge/commit/2c95bdd6f335178d960603fdd0116ecf685978d8

Perhaps the problem is farther downstream in ROS?

[scpeters]

https://travis-ci.org/scpeters/console_bridge/jobs/452058400#L526

[wjwwood]

rosout sends the logs as an ascii string in the topics, see:

https://github.com/ros/ros_comm_msgs/blob/bfb8533fd6c6e959c71f0d2a9669baeff2dac1ad/rosgraph_msgs/msg/Log.msg#L15

I do not believe this can be fixed because ROS 1's type system doesn't support wide strings.

Will support them in ROS 2 though, so maybe we should put that (should support unicode messages) as input to the ongoing work for the logging subsystem in ROS 2:

https://discourse.ros.org/t/ros2-logging/6469

[scpeters]

thanks @wjwwood

I added a comment that we should support this in ros2

I will close this issue since it is not a problem with console_bridge