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Thread: Unicode support on Win32

Unicode support on Win32

From
Caleb
Date:
Hi,

I am using Windows as a development environment (and database design),
and  it seems that Unicode is not supported on Win32.

Is there word on when Unicode support will be implemented on the
Windows port of PostgreSQL?

I was used to using mySQL and it supported Unicode on Windows
properly.. But I suppose that the Windows port of PostgreSQL is still
working in progress.

On the other hand, could I pick a different charset for now, and when I
need to copy this whole database to a production machine (that will use
linux) choose the UTF-8 charset ?

I also don't seem to understand why you need to define the whole
database as unicode ? Don't you only need unicode for certain fields,
and the rest can be Latin1?

Thanks :)



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Re: Unicode support on Win32

From
Bruce Momjian
Date:
Caleb wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am using Windows as a development environment (and database design),
> and  it seems that Unicode is not supported on Win32.

Yes, the problem is that we only support UTF-8 and the Win32 collation
routines only support UTF-16.  You can actually use UTF-8 if you don't
care about ordering of the character set, but pginstaller doesn't
support those options --- you have to run initdb manually.

> Is there word on when Unicode support will be implemented on the
> Windows port of PostgreSQL?
>
> I was used to using mySQL and it supported Unicode on Windows
> properly.. But I suppose that the Windows port of PostgreSQL is still
> working in progress.

It is not a "work in progress" as far as we are concerned.  You have hit
a limitation, but it is ready for serious use.

> On the other hand, could I pick a different charset for now, and when I
> need to copy this whole database to a production machine (that will use
> linux) choose the UTF-8 charset ?

Yes.

> I also don't seem to understand why you need to define the whole
> database as unicode ? Don't you only need unicode for certain fields,
> and the rest can be Latin1?

No, we don't support per-table or per-column encodings yet either.

--
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
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Re: Unicode support on Win32

From
Shachar Shemesh
Date:
Bruce Momjian wrote:

>Caleb wrote:
>
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>I am using Windows as a development environment (and database design),
>>and  it seems that Unicode is not supported on Win32.
>>
>>
>
>Yes, the problem is that we only support UTF-8 and the Win32 collation
>routines only support UTF-16.  You can actually use UTF-8 if you don't
>care about ordering of the character set, but pginstaller doesn't
>support those options --- you have to run initdb manually.
>
>
I know this is the wrong list for it, but here are some thoughts about
solutions:
1. Convert to UTF-16 - Windows give you builtin functions to do that.
2. Use another library set (ICU?)

          Shachar

--
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd.
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