Can I set a field to UTF8?

[jake barnes]

I am new at the company where I work. It is a publishing company.

I know very little about FileMaker.

Here is the situation. The company has an old FileMaker database that was set up during the 1990s. The editorial staff loves the FileMaker database. Or, rather, they are used to it. They interview people, and somehow input the text of the interviews into FileMaker.

Elsewhere in the company, there is an art/design staff that pulls data from FileMaker, and they turn this into the monthly magazine.

I am working with the tech team that enables the web site. The website works with a MySql database, and runs using PHP. Here is how things are handled:

1.) Export content from FileMaker to some text format.

2.) Run lots of scripts on the text format, to make it ready for the web.

3.) Import the text content to MySql, so it can be seen on the web.

I would like to reduce the work in step #2. Apparently the FileMaker database is set up to hold latin characters. The website is UTF8. In step #2, we convert some of the latin characters to UTF8.

Now, I am wondering why FileMaker can not be changed to allow the text to be entered as UTF8 in the first place. If this was MySql, this would be trivially easy. I am wondering if this is also trivially easy with FileMaker? Could someone tell me something about how FileMaker manages the character encoding of its fields?

[comment]

I am not sure what difference it makes: as long as your data contains only lower ASCII characters, there is no conversion. In any case, Filemaker supports Unicode from version 7 and higher.

[bruceR]

The export script step allows the option to specify UTF8 output.

In addition, you have the set up the indexing of the text field to be Unicode.

[jake barnes]

Why would you assume the content only has ASCII characters?

[jake barnes]

BruceR, that is what I am asking about. How do I set up the indexing of the text field to be Unicode? Where do I look for info on that?

[bruceR]

BruceR, that is what I am asking about. How do I set up the indexing of the text field to be Unicode? Where do I look for info on that?

In field indexing; which is listed under Storage in field definitions.

[jake barnes]

Thanks very much!

[comment]

Why would you assume the content only has ASCII characters?

Maybe it has something to do with your saying:

Apparently the FileMaker database is set up to hold latin characters.

and NOT saying anything to indicate otherwise.

But if you're going to rip my head off for it, then never mind.

[jake barnes]

Rip your head off?

[comment]

Did you solve your original issue?