# Unicode

Wikipedia has an article about:
Unicode 

Unicode is a character encoding that aims to represent every writing system that has ever been used. 
Beginning with NetHack 3.7.0, the map can be configured to display any Unicode character to represent most map symbols - many writing systems will be of little use to NetHack, but the extensive inventory of accented Latin letters and symbols should prove quite useful. With an appropriate font mapping to the Private Use Areas, a Unicode-enabled map could in principle display tiles in the TTY and Curses ports.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.

Unicode support is still incomplete.
Current state of support
Unicode symbols are supported in the platforms and window ports indicated in the table below.

Window port
Platform
Support
Notes

TTY
Linux and Mac
Yes

TTY
Windows
Yes

TTY
MS-DOS
Yes

Curses
Linux and Mac
Yes

Curses
Windows
Yes
If building with MingW, provide WANT_GUICURSES to switch to PDCursesMod and enable supplementary characters. (This also enables the Curses port on NetHackW.)

Curses
MS-DOS
Yes
If WANT_DOSVGA is specified at build time

Win32
Windows
Yes

Qt
Windows, Linux and Mac
Yes

X11
Linux and Mac
Yes
No supplementary characters

How to configure
The file "symbols" contains several configurations for the map. In the supplied configuration, "Enhanced1" specifies Unicode characters.
A character may be specified using this form:

S_vwall: U+2502

The quoted form used for other symbol types is not supported.
One may specify a symbol for a specific monster as follows:

G_female_giant_ant: U+E000

One glyph symbol is defined for every glyph code. About half of these codes can never occur; the largest reason is that eight glyphs are allocated for swallow attacks for each monster, but only a few monsters can swallow.
Color can be assigned to each glyph:

G_female_giant_ant: U+E000/200-100-50

The numbers are intensity for red, green and blue, ranging from 0 to 255

Outstanding bugs
Some configurations may not support supplemental characters or full color.
A large number of configured symbols may cause delays in starting the program.
Symbols for objects are accepted but not displayed. The default ASCII characters appear instead.
The --dumpglyphids is not supported on all platforms.