FreeTDS Development Group

["Lowden, James K" <LowdenJK AT bernstein.com>]

> From: edwardspl AT ita.org.mo [mailto:edwardspl AT ita.org.mo]
> Sent: March 26, 2004 10:07 AM
> > On Fri, 26 Mar 2004, edwardspl AT ita.org.mo wrote:
> > > "Lowden, James K" wrote:
> > >
> > > > What character set is your client using?
> > >
> > > Chinese ( Traditional )
> >
> > I think that's a font.  I'm looking for your encoding.  Do 
>  > any of these look familiar?
> >
> > $ iconv -l |egrep -i 'chinese|big.*5|utf.*8'
> > UTF-8
> > CHINESE GB_2312-80 ISO-IR-58 CSISO58GB231280
> > BIG-5 BIG-FIVE BIG5 BIGFIVE CN-BIG5 CSBIG5
> > BIG5-HKSCS BIG5HKSCS
>
> I want to know how can we convert the charset of unicode from 
> MS-SQL...
> Because there are many different clients ( differ user ) 
> connect to the
> MS-SQL, so I need to config "freetds.conf" support for 
> multi-language (
> english and non-english ), but I don't quite to know how to 
> set the value
> of client charset of the config file for this function...

FreeTDS will use your system's iconv library to convert your clients' 
encoding to/from the form of Unicode used by the server.  All you need to do 
is make sure FreeTDS uses the system's iconv, and specify the client charset 
you want.  

1.  Make sure libiconv is installed.
2.  Make sure FreeTDS detects you iconv library when you run ./configure.  
Use "./configure --with-libiconv-prefix=" if need be.  
3.  Use "iconv -l" to list your iconv's available encodings.  
4.  Decide which encoding your client will use.  I recommend UTF-8, if it 
suits you.  
5.  Add this line to the [global] section in your freetds.conf:
        client charset = UTF-8
    (or whatever encoding you choose).
6.  Test with tsql.  If it doesn't work "export TDSDUMP=/tmp/tdsdump", run 
tsql again, and look at the log.  It will tell you if iconv was engaged 
correctly.  If it's not clear, send the log here.  

UTF-8 can encode all known writing systems, both real and fictional.  This of 
course includes English and Chinese.  

I hope that helps.  In the future, please make you questions concrete.  Show 
us what you did, and what happened.  That will make it easier for us to 
answer your questions.  

--jkl

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