[FX.php List] Re: Encodings utf-8 UTF-16BE etc...

[Thes Quid]

Ditch Excel? Wouldn't I like to!
  But it's what the customers are comfortable with...
I'll tolerate them using it as long as I can programmatically output  
the files.

> From: ggt667 at gmail.com (Gjermund Gusland Thorsen)
> Date: Sun Jul 23 06:00:19 2006
> Subject: [FX.php List] Encodings
>
> Excel complicates, try to use a different environment.
>
> ggt667
>
> On 7/23/06, Thes Quid <thesquid at friedbaloney.com> wrote:
> > Hi everyone!
> >
> > I'm using the output from FX.php to create excel files, but it seems
> > FX outputs DCR (decimal character representation [like &#09880].
> > (I'm using lots of different languages mixed together, like chinese/
> > russian/english)
> > Excel only likes utf-16. When I use the php Spreadsheet/Write/Excel
> > PEAR class, it works fine, but that dies if the excel is too big.
> > The perl module (upon which the php module is based) can handle such
> > sizes, but it doesn't convert like the php module does.
> > Question:
> > Is there a way to tell FX to output utf-16 instead of DCR (also know
> > as NCR numerical char rep)?
> > Does anyone know a way to convert from DCR to utf-16? In php or  
> perl,
> > it doesn't matter.
> >
> > thanks,
> >
> > Dana L. Coe
> > _______________________________________________
> >
>

Thanks Steve, I already have mbstring compiled in, plus iconv support.
I18N through PEAR hadn't occurred to me, thanks, I'll give it a try.

> From: shannah at sfu.ca (Steve Hannah)
> Date: Sun Jul 23 08:19:56 2006
> Subject: [FX.php List] Encodings
>
> This is really a limitation in PHP more than anything as it doesn't
> natively support multi-byte strings.  However there are some
> solutions available.
>
> 1.  Use the mbstring extension for PHP (it would have to be compiled
> into your PHP):
> http://www.php.net/mbstring
>
> 2. Use the I18N_UnicodeString PEAR class to convert the strings:
> http://pear.php.net/package/I18N_UnicodeString
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Best regards
>
> Steve