Arabic Language & UTF-8

[m0h]

Hello,

I have been trying all day to add arabic language support to my forum, my problem is that I'm using UTF-8 and the Arabic language file I'm using is set to use windows-1256 so after I install the language file it works great if I use the encoding windows-1256 but when I change back to UTF-8 all the Arabic text get messed up!

Any ideas?

[Steve Machol]

<Moved to Languages forum>

Not sure if I can help much with this, but if it worked great with windows-1256 why change it?

[m0h]

Bec. most of my users are linux users, windows-1256 is not some thing they like :)
Also bec. changing the encoding will break my old posts.

I think I'll have to change the encoding of the language file to utf-8, but I'm not sure how to do that!

Thanx :)

[Steve Machol]

Admin CP -> Languages & Phrases -> Language Manager -> Edit Settings

[m0h]

Thanx for your reply :)
My problem is that the text of the Arabic language is stored in my database in the windows-1256 format so what I need to do it to convert it to uft-8, either convert the language data in my database or the language file then readd it.

[Steve Machol]

Sorry I have no idea how to do that. Perhaps someone else will.

[Scott MacVicar]

converting text from one character set to another isn't that easy.

Do you have the iconv extension installed in PHP?

[m0h]

Nope, but I'll install it now.

[m0h]

Its now installed, what is the next step?

[m0h]

Ok, I make a test file to convert the phrase in the database to utf-8 using iconv, it worked and the phrases are no converted, but still the text is messed up! is there any thing else I should do?

Thanx :)

<?php

include("commen.php");

$dbcnx = dbConnect("linuxeg_vbulliten");

$do =50;

$TutList = mysql_query("SELECT text,phraseid FROM `phrase` WHERE languageid =9 LIMIT $start , $do");

$start=$start+$do;

while ( $row = mysql_fetch_array($TutList) ) {

$text = $row["text"];

$phraseid = $row["phraseid"];

$ntext = iconv("windows-1256", "UTF-8", $text);

mysql_query("UPDATE `phrase` SET text = '$ntext' where phraseid = $phraseid");

echo mysql_error();

echo "$ntext <br>";

}

?>

<script type="text/javascript">

window.location="test.php?do=<?=$do?>&start=<?=$start?>";

</script>

[m0h]

umm, looks like this was so simple!
All I need was
iconv -f windows-1256 -t utf-8 vbulletin-language.xml > vbulletin-language-new.xml


And at last its now working :cool:

Thanx everyone for your help :)

[Bashar]

umm, looks like this was so simple!
All I need was
iconv -f windows-1256 -t utf-8 vbulletin-language.xml > vbulletin-language-new.xml


And at last its now working :cool:

Thanx everyone for your help :)
Perfect solution just tested it and works as charm :)

guess what this thread is the first hit for google when looking fir "convert windows-1256 to utf-8" ;)

[PHP Dev]

I want to know how could you execute this command:
iconv -f windows-1256 -t utf-8 vbulletin-language.xml > vbulletin-language-new.xml

Does Iconv contain command line features, not just a PHP add-one.

I hope that you teel me how to do that step-by-step to make my translation for all, that located here:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=168064

It contain ALL vBulletin 3.x Arabic files.

[Bashar]

I want to know how could you execute this command:
iconv -f windows-1256 -t utf-8 vbulletin-language.xml > vbulletin-language-new.xml
Does Iconv contain command line features, not just a PHP add-one.

I hope that you teel me how to do that step-by-step to make my translation for all, that located here:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=168064

It contain ALL vBulletin 3.x Arabic files. iconv is command line not php addon (atleast on freebsd boxes)

just try man iconv

[Cyborg86]

umm, looks like this was so simple!
All I need was
iconv -f windows-1256 -t utf-8 vbulletin-language.xml > vbulletin-language-new.xml
And at last its now working :cool:

Thanx everyone for your help :)

Hi,

I want to know where I should write this command line ? in which file ?

Thanks,

[Andy Huang]

That is a linux shell command that you'd need to execute over ssh on your server, in the folder where vbulletin-language.xml is located.

[Cobra-J82]

That is a linux shell command that you'd need to execute over ssh on your server, in the folder where vbulletin-language.xml is located.


Please can you be more specific, i have no idea wer to execute it like you said over the ssh on my server, what do you mean by that, and where is the vbulletin-language.xml located, keeping in mind my installation is all default location.

Thanks in advance.

[Chousho]

Please can you be more specific, i have no idea wer to execute it like you said over the ssh on my server, what do you mean by that, and where is the vbulletin-language.xml located, keeping in mind my installation is all default location.

Thanks in advance.
Download PuTTY (http://www2.tropic.org.uk/%7Esgtatham/putty/download.html), connect to your server, go to the appropriate directory, enter text. If you're on shared hosting, you might have to ask your host to allow you to SSH in.

[Cobra-J82]

Oh ok, but thanks
I went to Admin CP -> Languages & Phrases -> Language Manager -> Edit Settings For English like Steve said and change the HTML Charecter set from ISO to windows-1256, now Im able to view both languages with no corrupted charecters.

THanks anyway for help :)

[Ba$im]

just to make it clear for you
it will hurt your database if it work with latin_sw... and you are using utf-8 on your board

you must first convert collection of database to utf-8 then you will just change it from admin cp to utf-8
I did that on my forum

[joomlajon]

Is it possilbe to copy paste and save, then copy paste back via dreamweaver?

[Subah]

Good work :)

[AlShammari]

just type it in unix command line