Hi James, Thanks for the reply.... So, if I understand you correctly, I would be better off leaving the system the way it is and change the database data to UTF-8? How can I convert my databases from ISO88591 to UTF-8? Do you have some pointers to useful docs/websites? Thanks, MARK > -----Original Message----- > From: fedora-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx > [mailto:fedora-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of James Wilkinson > Sent: Friday, August 26, 2005 5:48 AM > To: fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx > Subject: Re: LANG system environment variable > > > Mark wrote: > > a while ago I had a strange problem with mysql and java > servlets. The > > servlet would not pull up accented characters and umlaut-characters > > correctly when they came from the database. I finally > figured out that > > I had to set the MySQL-JDBC driver to use ISO88591 rather > than UTF8 > > (which was the default). The default came from a system > property, and > > so setting "LANG=en_US.iso88591" in my tomcat > startup-script fixed the > > problem as well. > > And presumably the database was storing stuff in ISO8859-1. > So that's not too surprising... (I don't know if there's any > better way inside MySQL to handle this). > > > > Now I had some other problem with displaying man pages. One server > > shows it fine, a newer FC3 server screws up doublequotes and other > > characters. > > Was this manpages from packages supplied by the Fedora > project or elsewhere? If they come from Fedora-supplied > RPMs, then they need bugzilla entries. > > > So here is my question: > > /etc/sysconfig/i18n says: > > LANG="en_US.UTF-8" > > SUPPORTED="en_US.UTF-8:en_US:en" > > SYSFONT="latarcyrheb-sun16" > > > > What will happen if I change this to LANG=en_US.iso88591 > ??? Will this > > break tons of other stuff on my server? > > It's what you might expect. You'll start working with stuff > that expects ISO8859-1, but you'll stop working with stuff > that expects UTF-8. The good news is that practically all > software that handles UTF-8 does so by using the standard > libraries which can also handle ISO8859. > > It's the documents, and some of the communication systems, > where you might have problems. You might well have some > documents encoded in UTF-8, and ssh (for example) doesn't > have any way for the client or server to work out what > character set the other expects. So if you SSH from a > ISO8859-1 client to a UTF-8 server (or vice versa), you might > have problems. > > In my experience, practically everything in Fedora is happy > with ISO8859-1 at the moment (although I haven't tried too > much with it: mainly server-type stuff). > > What would concern me, though, is that you're already having > to store umlaut characters and accents. What else are you > likely to have to store? Is there any chance you'll have to > store Euro signs? More unusual accents? Greek or Russian or > Chinese names? > > As you've discovered, handling multiple character sets is no > fun. If you run into ISO8859-1's limitations hard enough, you > may find you have to go back to UTF-8. > > Hope this helps, > > James. > > -- > E-mail address: james | It is difficult to produce a > television documentary @westexe.demon.co.uk | that is both > incisive and probing when every twelve > | minutes one is interrupted by twelve > dancing rabbits > | singing about toilet paper. -- R. Serling > > -- > fedora-list mailing list > fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx > To unsubscribe: http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list >
