Current situation:
UNIX Server with 8.3B Progress
iso8859-1 english database with telnet clients.
I am looking for a way to let a japanese site to be able to work in this database in english and still handle local characters for there address information, etc. also to be able to print documents in japanese style( e.g. invoices)
Is this possible, and how can i get this working?
Client/server is not an option (because of the wan).
"Jos Schippers" wrote:
>>Current situation:
>UNIX Server with 8.3B Progress
>iso8859-1 english database with telnet clients.
>
>I am looking for a way to let a japanese site to be able>to work in this database in english and still handle
>local characters for there address information, etc.
>also to be able to print documents in japanese style(
>e.g. invoices)>Is this possible, and how can i get this working?
>Client/server is not an option (because of the wan).
Dear Jos Schippers,
What I would strongly recommend, is that you
upgrade to version 9 and use a database with
a Unicode code page instead of ISO 8859-1.
Unicode will support all of the characters
in ISO 8859-1 as well as all of the characters
in Japanese SHIFT-JIS code page.
If you or others are interested, I have
a draft of a white paper on migrating to
Unicode which will provide more detail
on what to do. In the interim, look at the
Progress Internationalization guide for
version 9 which will explain Unicode as well.
The one thing you will need to be careful
about is that your iso 8859-1 clients should
not access Japanese records, since they do not
have the ability to properly edit the records
and may corrupt them.
The Japanese clients can look at the English data.
If you have non-English ISO 8859-1 data (French,
German, etc.) then you will want to make sure
your Japanese clients only access Japanese
or English records. You may also want to
make sure that Japanese clients do not
accidentally put Japanese data into the
"English records", since English clients
won't understand the characters.
The good news about moving to Unicode, is then you can
also add clients from other parts of the world.
To do this in 8.3, the only thing I can recommend,
is that since SHIFT-JIS supports English, and if
your non-Japanese data is only English, then you can
make the database Shift-jis, and let your English clients
work in the shift-jis database. They won't know they
are not using an English database.
You will want to insure they cannot access the Japanese
records.
In the long run you are much better off upgrading
and using Unicode and preparing to take on other
languages as well.
Hope that helps
tex