[CLOSED] Help with French language special character problems

January 30, 2013, 10:27 AM

I am developing a report that uses the French language and so it contains some special characters. I am experiencing difficulties with this.

Here is what happens:

- Create a test report, insert some HTML just as a test. I specify the charset as utf-8. Include some special characters like é in the body of the HTML.
- Run the report. The special characters appear as commas.
- Save the report and close it.
- Reopen it.
- In the content of the report code, the special characters have all been replaced by question marks.

So if I am building a report, include special characters and run it, they display as commas... if I save and reopen the report, in the code they are replaced by question marks.

Code sample where I'm simply trying to get a couple special characters to display properly before going all out developing the report:

  -HTMLFORM BEGIN

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
</head>
<body>
ééé
</body>
</html>

-HTMLFORM END
-EXIT

Surely webfocus is capable of handling multiple languages and special characters, so I can't help but think I'm doing something wrong or maybe there is a server setting (which I would need help identifying, I am not an admin, just a report developer) that would cause the issues I have experienced.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kerry,

January 30, 2013, 11:26 AM

Francis Mariani

It is quite possible that you have to change the National Language settings on both the client and the reporting server. A code page that can display accented characters must be selected - e.g. 1252 - Western European.

NLS Settings for the client are set via the WF Administration Console.

NLS Settings for the reporting server are set via the WF Reporting Server Console.

The same code page should be set in both.

I would also change both these settings for the Developer Studio client and server.

January 30, 2013, 11:29 AM

Francis Mariani

Client Administration Console: ort/ibi_apps/console/webfocusconsole.jsp" target="_blank">http://server

ort/ibi_apps/co.../webfocusconsole.jsp

Reporting Server Console: http://server:8121/webconsole?IBIS_auth=out

January 30, 2013, 11:42 AM

Hi Francis,
Thanks for your replies. I am not familiar with the NLS settings and was browsing the help files.

I executed a report containing the following:

SET LANG = FRE
? LANG
-EXIT

and received the following output:
NATIONAL LANGUAGE INFORMATION
Language 033/FRENCH (FRE,fr)
Code Page 437
Client Code Page 437
Dollar 24($)
Lowcase alphabet YES
Decimal notation OFF(.)
Currency symbol $
Date/Time format EDA
NLS sort NO
NLS upcase/lowcase NO
NLS Control Characters OFF
DBCS Flag OFF(SBCS)

Does that mean that the server is letting me pick the language? (note that using SET LANG = FRE doesn't fix the issue). Where are the settings located?

January 30, 2013, 02:07 PM

Francis Mariani

I think code page 437 is the default installation code page. This is supposed to allow French characters, but I've had trouble with it. Try setting the code page to 137, using the links I previously described.

The values in ? LANG are modified by different methods, though most of them are set in the WF reporting server console NLS section. (Workspace > Configuration/Monitor > Server > NLS).

Some stuff to read:

Code Page issues - 137 or 65001

[SOLVED] Dev Studio 7.6.5 - accented characters problem

[CLOSED, but worried] Code pages and accents revisited, again

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Francis Mariani,