-%{ Unichars }%-
 
Unichars is a simple wrapper around Glib2. It was originally written to speed up ActiveSupport::Multibyte on Ruby 1.8 but it can probably used for other things as well.
 
 
--^^--^^- INSTALLING -^^--^^--
 
INSTALLING ON MAC OS X
 
$ port install glib2
$ gem install unichars
 
INSTALLING ON DEBIAN
 
$ apt-get install libglib2.0-dev
$ gem install unichars
 
 
--^^--^^- EXAMPLES -^^--^^--
 
FOR USE WITH RAILS
 
In config/environment.rb add:
 
  config.gem 'unichars'
 
Add config/initializers/unichars.rb:
 
  ActiveSupport::Multibyte.proxy_class = Unichars
 
After that you can just use Unichars through the character proxy on String:
 
  '¡Ay Dios mío!'.chars.reverse
 
FOR USE WITH ACTIVESUPPORT WITHOUT RAILS
 
Note that you probably want to load ActiveSupport before loading Unichars because Unichars subclasses itself from ActiveSupport::Multibyte::Chars when you do so.
 
  require 'rubygems' rescue LoadError
  require 'activesupport'
  require 'unichars'
  ActiveSupport::Multibyte.proxy_class = Unichars
 
After that you can just use Unichars through the character proxy on String:
 
  '¡Ay Dios mío!'.chars.reverse
 
FOR USE WITHOUT ACTIVESUPPORT
 
Yeah, so, ehm. Yeah.
 
  require 'rubygems' rescue LoadError
  require 'unichars'
 
After that you can do:
 
  Unichars.new('¡Ay Dios mío!').reverse
 
Or maybe:
 
  class String
    def chars
      Unichars.new(self)
    end
  end