Flash CS3 Documentation

ActionScript 2.0 Language Reference > ActionScript classes > System > useCodepage (System.useCodepage property)

useCodepage (System.useCodepage property)

A Boolean value that tells Flash Player whether to use Unicode or the traditional code page of the operating system running the player to interpret external text files. The default value of System.useCodepage is false.

• When the property is set to false, Flash Player interprets external text files as Unicode. (These files must be encoded as Unicode when you save them.)
• When the property is set to true, Flash Player interprets external text files using the traditional code page of the operating system running the player.

Text that you load as an external file (using the loadVariables() or getURL() statements, or the LoadVars class or XML class) must be encoded as Unicode when you save the text file in order for Flash Player to recognize it as Unicode. To encode external files as Unicode, save the files in an application that supports Unicode, such as Notepad on Windows 2000.

If you load external text files that are not Unicode-encoded, you should set System.useCodepage to true. Add the following code as the first line of code in the first frame of the SWF file that is loading the data:

System.useCodepage = true;

When this code is present, Flash Player interprets external text using the traditional code page of the operating system running Flash Player. This is generally CP1252 for an English Windows operating system and Shift-JIS for a Japanese operating system. If you set System.useCodepage to true, Flash Player 6 and later treat text as Flash Player 5 does. (Flash Player 5 treated all text as if it were in the traditional code page of the operating system running the player.)

If you set System.useCodepage to true, remember that the traditional code page of the operating system running the player must include the characters used in your external text file in order for the text to display. For example, if you load an external text file that contains Chinese characters, those characters cannot display on a system that uses the CP1252 code page because that code page does not include Chinese characters.

To ensure that users on all platforms can view external text files used in your SWF files, you should encode all external text files as Unicode and leave System.useCodepage set to false by default. This way, Flash Player 6 and later interprets the text as Unicode.

Availability: ActionScript 1.0; Flash Player 6

Flash CS3