UTF-8 Support in Desktop Applications

Description

In some Desktop Applications built prior to the release of Alpha Anywhere, you will need to check the data returned by the AlphaDAO connection string in your Desktop Application and handle the conversion to UTF-8.

Discussion

All data accessed from SQL databases using AlphaDAO is returned in UTF-8 form. In desktop applications built in Alpha Five Version 9 or older, data accessed from SQL databases was translated to ANSI format.

When using data from SQL databases in Xdialogs, be conscious of whether or not data is in UTF-8 form. The {encoding=utf8} and {encoding=ascii} can be used to automatically convert data formats when data is displayed in an Xdialog. See Working with UTF-8 Data for more details.

You can also use the convert_utf8_to_acp() function to convert data from UTF-8 to ansi format. The corresponding [convert_acp_to_utf8()] function converts from ANSI to UTF-8.

This article applies to Alpha Five Version 9 and older. It is not applicable to Alpha Anywhere.

Limitations

Desktop Applications Only, Alpha Five Version 9