[derfelix]

nooo !!!

Sorry.. english is not my mother tongue...

What works for me:

1. If you use standard vbulletin from vbulletin.com without having modified the vbulletin xml parser class...
then the first line of ALL xml files should be:

PHP Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

Same thing for the product files...

OK?

If you use UTF-8 for the languages, then you open the xml file in your favorite editor.. ( I use "edit plus") and without modifying anything you do a "save as".
There you select encoding: UTF-8 in the dropdown. Then simply click save and overwrite the old file.
(Most editors have that option.. even notepad has UTF-8 when you do "save as")

Of course this is the standard.. IF the user uses english vbulletin and adds the other languages as custom languages with UTF-8 charset.

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2. IF the user uses chinese product and the other languages as custom languages it is different. He probably has the chinese vbulletin installed. It is patched to accept the utf-8 first line for xml files..
In that case the chinese product is correct as it is in the package..
but he has to change the other language files..
All the first lines of the language files will have to be :

PHP Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

And all language files saved as UTF-8 in editor..

It doesnt matter for the product file it will import correctly whatever the header is.. its just for the phrases in the product file.


The major problem is.. NOT all users use UTF-8 encoding.. or mix encodings when importing languages
Example:

french language Charset: ISO 8859-1
and chinese language Charset: UTF-8
both on the same board!!!

This will seem to work at first.. but is bad.. because your problems will appear as soon as you post in the forums...

In this example:
If a french user posts.. (when the board is set to french) he will post in ISO 8859-1... and the chinese user will post in UTF-8 because he will have chosen to view the board in chinese.
So if the french user looks at the post of the chinese user.. (even if the chinese user posted in french!!!! ) he will not see the special charachters correctly.. because he will be looking at the page in ISO 8859-1 and the chinese user posted the special characters in UTF-8..

That is why you sould always use the SAME encoding for ALL languages... (and only UTF-8 works with ALL languages) I think that is why vbulletin 4.0 will be UTF-8 only.



Hope that was clear..
If not I will try to do some further explanations..

Felix..