RE: utf8 in QB

Hi Taras, 

> Does QB default to utf8. Executing 'show variables like 
> 'character_set_%''
> shows that all of the variables are set to utf8 (I've created 
> my database with utf8 as the default charset) except for 
> server (set on latin1), and filesystem (set on binary).

QB uses Unicode. That's the correct term. UTF is only a way to express
Unicode in memory, on disk etc. Depending on the platform, different
transformation formats are used. On Windows QB uses UTF-16 for the UI and
certain parts of the library. Communication with the server and shared
library code is done using UTF-8.
 
> Having said that, why can I type in characters using MS 
> pinyin editor into query editing area at the top, and even 
> though the characters in the editing pane are stuffed, they 
> get inserted correctly (checked by using HEX())?

I don't understand your question. Why can you do that? Because we have it
implemented so. That's why you can do that. If your characters are too close
together (which is likely with scripts that have wide [socalled full width]
characters, like chinese) you can set a bigger spacing between the letters
using the application's option. However note that half width characters as
well as other scripts like latin1, russian, greek etc. will have a bit too
wide spacing then. The editors in QB use fixed width fonts, hence all
characters have the same width, regardless of their actual glyph.

> Although they get inserted correctly, when I execute select 
> *, the chinese characters display correctly but they are 
> rotated to the left 90 degrees (I'm using Arial MS Unicode 
> font) - does anyone else have this problem?

That is strange and I can only assume that you've picked the wrong font.
Note that chinese originally is a vertical writing system so there were
attempts to allow vertical writing also on computers. For this to work
special fonts are installed which usually appear with a leading @ sign.
These fonts have rotated glyphs.

I might be wrong, but I assume you have accidentially picked such a font.
Please try another font and see if that helps.

Mike
--
Mike Lischke, Software Engineer GUI
MySQL AB, www.mysql.com


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