i18n hell

[Serge Orlov]

fyleow wrote:
> I just spent hours trying to figure out why even after I set my SQL
> table attributes to UTF-8 only garbage kept adding into the database.
> Apparently you need to execute "SET NAMES 'utf8'" before inserting into
> the tables.
>
> Does anyone have experience working with other languages using Django
> or Turbogears?  I just need to be able to retrieve and enter text to
> the database from my page without it being mangled.  I know these
> frameworks employ ORM so you don't need to write SQL and that worries
> me because I tried this on Rails and it wouldn't work.

Frequently asked question to people who are burning in i18n hell: are
you using unicode strings or byte strings? Unicode string means that
type(your_string) is unicode, it does not mean you keep utf-8 encoded
text in python byte strings.

AFAIK Ruby has only byte strings that have the same set of
issues/problems/traps as Python byte strings.