Vb6 Printer Object Print Japanese - object

Question

I want to use printer (windows driver) to print Japanese in a vb 6 project.
My project is in Japanese Windows Environment (the OS is English Originally, set Japan region and related language).
I use Printer object to print a simple string type of Japanese such as "レジースター", the code like
Dim s As String
s="レジースター"
Printer.Print s
Printer.EndDoc
but the output result is a set of messy code like "􀀀OEvƒOEƒ|􀀀[ƒg"
Does anybody who can succeeded in printing out Japanese with Vb6 Printer Object in Japanese language Windows Envrionment, please help me.
Finally find the key is simple, it's a little bit tricky but I still don't know why. Just set the font of the Printer Object like "Printer.Font.Charset = 128" (128 for Japanese)
ATTN: Pls pay attention to my case, my OS is English with the language and region setting to Japanese.
What make me confused is that the default ANSI of Windows. As we know, the default value of Printer.Font.Charset is 0, it means ANSI (IF the language environment is Japanese then it will use code page 932, if it is English, it will use Windows-1252).
My OS is Japanese (set to Japanese, not purely, Originally English OS), when I try to Write a file in Japanese it can display Japanese, but when I use the Printer Object to Print, it does have 0(ANSI) value of .Font.Charset, but actually it still use the original OS code page, so it is wired. And when I try to set the system to Chinese and Korean, both of the language is normal, only Japanese have this problem.

Answer 1

the trick that i have used for something like this is to use double StrConv() functions, one with the vbFromUnicode constant and the other with the vbToUnicode constant.
It takes alittle experimenting to get right , but it should look something like this, swap the constants and/or codepage values until you get the right conversion for your system
Dim s as string
s="レジースター"
Dim newS as string
newS = StrConv((StrConv(s,FromUnicode,CodePage1),ToUnicode,CodePage2)
Printer.Print newS
CodePage*N* is the Windows codepage value, 1252 for English, 932 for Japanese

Answer 2

Despite all strings in VB6 are Unicode (UTF-16), when it comes to interfacing with the world VB6 is completely non-Unicode.
You cannot store レジースター in your project file because the file is in ANSI.
You cannot simply pass a string to a declared API function because it will undergo an automatic conversion to ANSI first. To avoid this, you have to declare string parameters as pointers.
Apparently same happens to the Print call - the string gets converted to the currect ANSI codepage before it reaches the printer driver.
You can try printing manually by creating a device context and printing on it.
Or you can search for another solution, like this one (I did not try it).