[ic] UTF-8 in MySQL

[Gert van der Spoel]

Ivan Kurmanov writes: 

> On 2006-03-07, Elver Loho wrote:
> ...
>> Um, dude. That's the problem right now with our new table. We're
>> storing UTF-8 text as UTF-8 in the database. Interchange doesn't issue
>> 'set names utf8' or 'set character set utf8' in order to read those
>> fields. How can we tell it to?
> 
> 'set names utf8' and 'set character set utf8' change server configuration
> variables.  But you don't have to issue these statements to change them: there
> are other ways to influence them.  For instance, via the MySQL option files
> (/etc/my.cnf).  Or via server start-up command-line options. 
> 
> For example, you can add this to /etc/my.conf  
> 
> [mysqld]
> character_set_client=utf8
> character_set_results=utf8
> character_set_connection=utf8 
> 
> and it should work exactly as 'set names utf8' at the start of each MySQL
> session.  
> http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/charset.html
> http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/option-files.html
> http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/server-system-variables.html 
> 
> 
> But I'm afraid this is not enough to make IC support UTF-8.  Because there's
> much more involved: decoding data that you get from the database in perl,
> (also, from other databases and files), decoding data that you get from the
> users via cgi, encoding data that you write, setting charset of the pages
> output... 
> 
> I tried to do this, and I made just the beginning of the job.  Then I gave up.
> I published my patch for someone to take over http://ahinea.com/en/tech/ic/unicode.html
> and finish, and Gert van der Spoel (on this list) mentioned in a private mail,
> that he would try.
 

The only thing I did not get at that point was the patch :)  I now saw the 
patch you published on your pages and that is useful information to make IC 
more international, thanks! 

I've been working a while now with IC and a mysql database in which I put 
utf-8 content (dutch, english, greek) .. Some fast tweaks made it usable for 
my situation. But getting to be something generic is still something to be 
worked on. 

Hopefuly with the major version of IC this could be well on its way! 

CU, 

Gert