[thelist] [TIP] - Use UTF-8 whenever possible, or get used to extra doses of caffeine.

Luther, Ron Ron.Luther at hp.com
Wed May 10 16:33:40 CDT 2006


VOLKAN ÖZÇELIK offered up a nice tip extolling the use of UTF-8:

>>Again, it is a good practce to use UTF-8 as the encoding of your web application.


Hi Volkan,


There are a lot of things I like about UTF-8, but I've still got a question 
or two since I don't use UTF-8 much today.  (However, I will be working with 
it more in the future.)

Say you've got a 'search' screen in your app and your user wants to search 
for a record using a field like 'last name' that allows diacritical marks 
like agraves and such.  

How do they type in "ÖZÇELIK" to get a match and bring up that record?

What happens on the search if they get the diacritical marks incorrect 
(They type the "O" with a circumflex instead of a diaeresis or trema) 
or leave the marks off entirely?  No match?


Thanks,

RonL.

(Who has, over the last couple of years, seen a number of front-end and 
back-end processes, tools, and apps (designed for ASCII-7) 'implode' when 
confronted with UTF-8 data.)




More information about the thelist mailing list