Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
Internationalizing Applications

8-bit character data

To determine the code page of 8-bit character data, consider each place the data is stored or generated and determine the code page of each such place. The actual technique varies depending on the data location and is described separately by data location.

Some of the following techniques involve placing data into a text file. Use the chkdotd.p procedure (located in the DLC/prolang directory) to examine the contents of the file. Before you run this procedure, make sure you start OpenEdge with the -cpinternal startup parameter set to undefined. The chkdotd.p procedure examines all characters in the text file. For each character, chkdotd.p writes the character’s numeric value and the number of times it appears. You then compare the output of chkdotd.p to printed charts of the various code pages used in your locale.

The standard approach is to take the numeric value of a character and see how many times it appears in the file. You then use the numeric value to index the character against a specific code page. If the corresponding character displayed in the code page is not a character that you would expect to see, or if the character occurs more often than it should, you can probably rule out that code page.

Techniques are described below for the following data locations:

OpenEdge databases.
Character terminals.
Windows screen and keyboards.
Printers.
Table dump (.d) files and other external text files.
OpenEdge libraries.