Hi Sebastian and list, Sebastian Mendel schrieb: Who changed this anyway? In my original MySQL 4.1 compatibility code, the option to change the connection charset was intentionally not given to the user - only for dump files, afaik. Right, we would need to either recode the language files or on the fly any string that comes from MySQL. But I guess, we would destroy the "intention" of that feature - see my explanation below. It doesn't, afaik. +++ from my side Well, if you use some old MySQL application that was coded against MySQL 3.23 and thus is not aware of all that charset stuff, it certainly will happen that this application writes in a different charset than MySQL assumes. For instance, phpBB 2.x internally uses UTF-8 (which MySQL prior 4.1 did non support anyway), but does not send "SET NAMES utf8". MySQL by default assumes latin1 (which was the default charset in MySQL 3.23). The result is that you have kind of double encoded data in your tables. If you access these tables with phpMyAdmin, it looks like they are displayed wrong (while in fact, phpMyAdmin is right). Setting the connection charset to latin1 but treating incoming data as if it was utf8 is exactly what phpBB 2 and other applications do, so the data displays seemingly correctly. Anyway, when I wrote the code for MySQL 4.1, my opinion was that this should not be the problem of phpMyAdmin. If you decide to keep that "feature", it is imho to prominent where it is right now and you should add warnings with tons of exclamation marks against using it.

Hi Sebastian and list, Sebastian Mendel schrieb: Who changed this anyway? In my original MySQL 4.1 compatibility code, the option to change the connection charset was intentionally not given to the user - only for dump files, afaik.

Right, we would need to either recode the language files or on the fly any string that comes from MySQL. But I guess, we would destroy the "intention" of that feature - see my explanation below. It doesn't, afaik. +++ from my side Well, if you use some old MySQL application that was coded against MySQL 3.23 and thus is not aware of all that charset stuff, it certainly will happen that this application writes in a different charset than MySQL assumes. For instance, phpBB 2.x internally uses UTF-8 (which MySQL prior 4.1 did non support anyway), but does not send "SET NAMES utf8". MySQL by default assumes latin1 (which was the default charset in MySQL 3.23). The result is that you have kind of double encoded data in your tables. If you access these tables with phpMyAdmin, it looks like they are displayed wrong (while in fact, phpMyAdmin is right). Setting the connection charset to latin1 but treating incoming data as if it was utf8 is exactly what phpBB 2 and other applications do, so the data displays seemingly correctly. Anyway, when I wrote the code for MySQL 4.1, my opinion was that this should not be the problem of phpMyAdmin. If you decide to keep that "feature", it is imho to prominent where it is right now and you should add warnings with tons of exclamation marks against using it. Regards, Alexander ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Phpmyadmin-devel mailing list Phpmyadmin-devel(a)lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/phpmyadmin-devel

Just read the docs to refresh my memory. Changing the connection charset is fine. It is used for comparisions and should not affect the results. In the current PMA, the client charset is changed instead (and this is the evil thing I was talking about). I'm having a look at this, hang on.