Jason,

> If the CharSet property is set to UTF-8 then I anticipate that
> Firebird is transliterating whatever character set the data is
> stored in the database to UTF-8 format which then necessitates that
> the client take that UTF-8 character data and run it through the
> routine that transliterates the UTF-8 chararacter format to whatever
> the local character set is.

The local character set here in western Europe is Windows 1252. If you
assume that, I would be unable to access all the Unicode characters
outside the Windows 1252 area.

> I don't understand why you would want to turn off the
> transliteration from raw UTF-8 to your local character set.

I want to store and retrieve all possible Unicode characters in my
database (for mixed-language applications). That's why I use UTF8 as
the Character Set for my database columns and that's why I use UTF8 as
the client character set. All other Client character sets would
restrict me to the characters in ISO8859_1 or WIN1252 or whatever.

> Are you saying that the built-in routine in Delphi that does the
> transliteration is defective and you want to control it entirely
> yourself?

I am not saying that the transliteration routine is defective, I just
want to have control over the characters when I want/need it. For
databases that are known to be only used for German text, I will use
ISO8895_1 for the database and the client.

So if I want to have characters in, say, ISO8859_1 i specify that as
the Client character set and everything gets transliterated to that.
Same for WIN1252. But when I specify UTF8 as the Client character set,
I would like to have the "real thing".

As far as I understand things, the Client DLL (fbclient.dll) does all
the transliteration, so you just have to hand over what you get from
there?


Best Regards

Stefan