Re: Displaying 'umlaut' character
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 14:31:57 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <f627ee06-cba4-4a2a-96a0-ac21f8050977_at_y12g2000prb.googlegroups.com>
On Sep 28, 11:58 am, "Peter J. Holzer" <hjp-usen..._at_hjp.at> wrote:
> On 2010-09-26 15:26, Frank van Bortel <fbor..._at_home.nl> wrote:
>
> > On 09/22/2010 06:35 PM, joel garry wrote:
> >> On Sep 22, 12:20 am, Frank van Bortel<fbor..._at_home.nl> wrote:
> >>> Maybe this helps: (shameless self promotion)http://vanbortel.blogspot.com/2009/04/special-characters-part-i.html
> >>> Last part is here:http://vanbortel.blogspot.com/2010/01/special-characters-part-iv.html
>
> >> Thanks for that Frank, I'm always forgetting where I've seen the
> >> excellent write-up.
>
> I disagree. It isn't excellent. It is at best didactically inept and at
> worst dangerously wrong.
Example of dangerously wrong, please.
Most of what I've seen (including MOS) is worse, didactically.
>
> > Thanks for the thumbs up.
>
> > However - one thing I was trying to clarify,
> > is the fact that
> > * you do not store characters; you store code points
>
> Nope. Of course from a very low-level point of view you only store
> bytes. But those bytes have a meaning for Oracle - in the case of a
> varchar2 field they mean characters, just as they mean floating point
> numbers in a number field or dates in date field.
>
> > * there's no such thing as a wrong database character set
>
> The database character set is wrong if it isn't able to represent the
> characters you want to store.
It's also wrong if it does store the characters you want to store, but changes them later (the obvious example being 8 bit characters in 7- bit character set, but there are more subtle examples).
>
> > (a.k.a. there's always one way to screw up, at least!)
>
> There is also a way to not screw up. That would be the way most people
> prefer.
They may say they prefer it, but often they screw up anyways. Often this involves not following the instructions.
jg
-- _at_home.com is bogus. But it takes mass media to really screw up. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/sep/27/encinitas-students-warned-be-vigilant/Received on Tue Sep 28 2010 - 16:31:57 CDT