Thread: Multibyte FAQ item

Multibyte FAQ item

From
Bruce Momjian
Date:
Do we need an multibyte/locale/unicode FAQ item?  Questions about these
seem to be asked a lot, but the documentation for these items is quite
good.

--
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Re: Multibyte FAQ item

From
Jani Averbach
Date:
On Sat, 22 Sep 2001, Bruce Momjian wrote:

>
> Do we need an multibyte/locale/unicode FAQ item?  Questions about these
> seem to be asked a lot, but the documentation for these items is quite
> good.
>

Well IMHO, this one is very self explaning
<http://www.postgresql.org/idocs/index.php?multibyte.html>

but these aren't...
(from pgsql 7.1.3, I can't grab stuff from the cvs at the moment for some
reason)

jaa @ eowyn 114 $ ./configure --help
--8<--
  --enable-multibyte      enable multibyte character support
--8<--

and
jaa @ eowyn 114 $ less INSTALL
--8<--
     --enable-multibyte

          Allows the use of multibyte character encodings. This is
          primarily for languages like Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. Read
          the Administrator's Guide for details.
--8<--

If you are 8-bit speaking people (ie. iso8859-1), you will just think ok,
thats not concern me. And at the that very same moment you will lose.

So, it will be nice if there is more verbose help text in the INSTALL
file, or even own FOR_8BIT_CHARS_READ_THIS file.

I think that there is enought information after you have realize that if
you would like use 8-bit chars, you have to be multibyte turned on.

If the situation isn't that at the moment, please forgot me.


BR, Jani


P.S. There was a thread about this topic in the jdbc-mailing list starting
from here:

<http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jdbc/2001-05/msg00018.php>

---
Jani Averbach



Re: Multibyte FAQ item

From
Peter Eisentraut
Date:
Jani Averbach writes:

>      --enable-multibyte
>
>           Allows the use of multibyte character encodings. This is
>           primarily for languages like Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. Read
>           the Administrator's Guide for details.
> --8<--
>
> If you are 8-bit speaking people (ie. iso8859-1), you will just think ok,
> thats not concern me. And at the that very same moment you will lose.

This really comes down to the point that multibyte, unicode, and locale
should be the defaults.  People generally object to this on performance
grounds, but that reminds me of the saying, "I can make this code
arbitrarily fast if it doesn't have to give the right answer."  Nor do I
believe these claims, btw.

--
Peter Eisentraut   peter_e@gmx.net   http://funkturm.homeip.net/~peter


Re: Multibyte FAQ item

From
Tom Lane
Date:
Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
> This really comes down to the point that multibyte, unicode, and locale
> should be the defaults.  People generally object to this on performance
> grounds, but that reminds me of the saying, "I can make this code
> arbitrarily fast if it doesn't have to give the right answer."

A fair point ...

> Nor do I believe these claims, btw.

Has anyone done any measurements of performance with/without these
options?  I know I haven't.

            regards, tom lane

Re: Multibyte FAQ item

From
tony
Date:
On Wed, 2001-09-26 at 06:22, Tom Lane wrote:

> > This really comes down to the point that multibyte, unicode, and locale
> > should be the defaults.  People generally object to this on performance
> > grounds, but that reminds me of the saying, "I can make this code
> > arbitrarily fast if it doesn't have to give the right answer."
>
> A fair point ...
>
> > Nor do I believe these claims, btw.
>
> Has anyone done any measurements of performance with/without these
> options?  I know I haven't.

Would be rather silly in my case because all my base are belong to
French locale...

=:-D

Cheers

Tony Grant


Multibyte design issue

From
Murray Hobbs
Date:
i'm new to multibyte support

i'm using unicode

i'm wondering if i have to rethink the size of string fields (char & varchar)
to allow for other languages - like is there some way of figuring out if the
fields should be larger?

any ideas welcome

murray


Bruce Momjian wrote:

> Do we need an multibyte/locale/unicode FAQ item?  Questions about these
> seem to be asked a lot, but the documentation for these items is quite
> good.
>
> --
>   Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
>   pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
>   +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
>   +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026
>
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