handle information in foreign languages

tooparam · 01-30-2006, 12:07 PM

Hi there

I want to design a web page for non English viewers/clients in which there will be some empty fields to be filled up by the viewers. They will enter the information in their own language. Can I handle that information in a similar manner as English. I mean to say can I save that into MySQL database or email that information. Does it require any special provisions or efforts? What are these requirements if any

Kindly show me the right direction

b0uncer · 01-31-2006, 05:38 AM

Hmm..well all the languages that are written using the same alphabets as in English (a-z,A-Z,0-9 etc) are just the same as English (software can't say, without explicit programming, tell what language it is, if the words use same letters that english does). Like "software" means just about the same to the program as "fdsafds" since they consist of the same kinds of alphabets. Problems that may occur, occur probably with languages that use scandinavian letters ä, ö or å, or languages that use different "alphabets" (different tags) like china.

Probably the biggest problems can be solved by making sure that the machine/software that processes the data has the locales it needs (all the locales you think the input may need). I'm not completely sure what MySQL does if you try to save some chinese tags into a MySQL database (an example), but try out and you'll see

tooparam · 02-01-2006, 12:11 PM

It is documented that lang attribute of <head> or <body> is used to specify different languages. But how does it work. Not clear. Actually I want to incorporate Portuguese(which uses many symbols) in my web site. Can lang attribute be of some help to me.