Correctly Displaying UTF-8 Characters in Windows Console

Many attempts to display UTF-8 characters in the Windows console using traditional methods fail to render the extended characters correctly.

Failed Attempts:

One common approach using MultiByteToWideChar() and wprintf() proved ineffective, leaving only ASCII characters visible. Additionally, setting the console output codepage to CP_UTF8 using SetConsoleOutputCP() and writing directly with ASCII characters still resulted in corrupted characters.

Successful Methods:

Ultimately, three methods proved successful:

1. Using the Console API Directly:
   Using the WriteConsoleW() function directly allows for writing Unicode data to the console without requiring conversion.
2. Setting File Descriptor Mode:
   Setting the mode of the standard output file descriptor to _O_U16TEXT or _O_U8TEXT alters the behavior of wide character output functions, enabling them to handle Unicode data correctly.
3. Implementing Custom Streambuf:
   The limitations of the CRT functions can be circumvented by implementing a custom streambuf subclass that manages the conversion to wchar_t properly, accounting for the piecewise nature of multibyte character transmission.

Reason for Failure with CP_UTF8:

The underlying issue with CP_UTF8 arises from the console not acting as a typical file that accepts a stream of bytes. Instead, the console API handles data in discrete units, causing multibyte characters to be interpreted incorrectly when transmitted in separate calls.