This isn't a complete answer but it may point you in the right direction... I had some experience of using localized text (most of the popular languages) in a database a couple of years ago. That was using Oracle but the lessons are the same.
Initially Oracle was not UTF-8 enabled. Alot of text could be stored using the latin character set. We'd use the \uXXXX notation or something similar for the special characters. Eventually we had Oracle UTF-8 enabled so we could just load in the special characters (such as Japanese and Chinese) from a UTF-8 text document. Note, I used the TextPad 4.5 program. It's SaveAs option enables you to save files using UTF-8 encoding. I'm no MySQL expert, but the different lanaguage setting in MySQL seem to mainly apply to its error messages. To my knowledge, MySQL does not yet offer full UTF-8 support so you might have to store the special characters using the \uXXXX notation or something similar. You might need a utility program to generate the text file codes easily. Someone in our office wrote one in Java. Skim through the following which I found after a quick search on google... http://darkstar.ist.utl.pt/mysql/doc/en/Charset-Unicode.html http://ldp.kernelnotes.de/HOWTO/Unicode-HOWTO.html http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~richard/unicode-sample.html www.unicode.org It's an excellent question. One that's on my todo list to work out fully! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Vikram Vaswani" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 5:48 PM Subject: Using a foreign character set in MYSQL > Hello all. > > I am working with MySQL 4.0. I have a requirement to create a data-driven > Web page to display Chinese text from a MySQL table. I'm completely new to > this, can someone tell me exactly what I need to do to make this happen? > > 1. For example, how do I insert the Chinese text from my source (a Word > doc) into a MySQL table without corrupting it? When I try copying and > pasting it into the mysql client command-line, the data gets trashed. > > 2. Once it's in, how do I get it back out into my application without > corrupting it? I'm using PHP 4.3 for the Web site. > > 3. If I need to make changes to the data from the command-line client, how > can I do it, especially if the query involves using a Chinese-language > string? For example, "update langdata set > menutitle='SOME_MENU_TITLE_IN_CHINESE' where > menutitle='SOME_OLD_MENU_TITLE_IN_CHINESE'" > > Looked at the online manual but am sorry to say it didn't really help much. > I tried starting the server with --character-set=big5 but it didn't seem to > make much difference... > > Thanks! > > Vikram > > -- > MySQL General Mailing List > For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql > To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.506 / Virus Database: 303 - Release Date: 01/08/2003 -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
