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Wiki source code of UTF-8 Encoding Tips

Version 9.1 by Ramsey Gurley on 2009/11/17 19:39
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1 = UTF-8 Encoding Tips =
2
3 Encoding questions are asked frequently on the mailing list. This is just a collection of tips for using UTF-8. It's a checklist of sorts. Make sure you've done all the things specified here before pitching your computer into the ocean :)
4
5 == Check your database ==
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7 The database needs to be storing values in UTF-8. If it isn't, then all your effort is wasted. For example, on MySQL that means a db url like
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9 {{noformat}}
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11 jdbc:mysql://localhost/Example?capitalizeTypenames=true&zeroDateTimeBehavior=convertToNull&useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF-8
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13 {{/noformat}}
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15 And setting your default charset and collation in your my.cnf file
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17 [[image:options.png]]
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19 == Fonts & CSS ==
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21 Different fonts may not have all the characters to display the different characters. If you're using a default stylesheet, then the browsers may be displaying differently simply because of fonts. Speaking of stylesheets, you probably want to encode that in UTF-8 also. Start your stylesheet with something like
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23 {{noformat}}
24
25 @charset "UTF-8";
26 @import url("reset.css");
27
28 /* Begin site CSS */
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30 {{/noformat}}
31
32 == Set eclipse encoding ==
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34 [[image:preferences.png]]
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36 == Use Project Wonder ==
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38 I think this goes without saying but: **Use Wonder**. Set encoding in the properties file. Notice it is UTF-8 with a hyphen. It it always UTF-8 with a hyphen... well, except with the MySQL image above because they excel in doing things differently :)
39
40 {{noformat}}
41
42 # Project Encoding
43 er.extensions.ERXApplication.DefaultEncoding=UTF-8
44
45 {{/noformat}}
46
47 == Set encoding in your page wrapper ==
48
49 {{noformat}}
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51 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
52 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC
53 "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1 plus MathML 2.0 plus SVG 1.1//EN"
54 "http://www.w3.org/2002/04/xhtml-math-svg/xhtml-math-svg-flat.dtd">
55
56 {{/noformat}}
57
58 == Localizable strings should be in UTF-16! ==
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60 Localizable.strings should be encoded in UTF-16. The localizer can detect UTF-16 without error, where it can confuse UTF-8 with other encodings. Pascal says use UTF-16LE if you want to be explicit about things... Especially if you are editing your strings files in an external editor like BBEdit or whatnot. I use the eclipse editor and UTF-16 myself and all seems to work fine for me. So to each his own.
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62 == Your tips go here. ==
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64 It's a wiki, ya know :)