What encoding should i use for french

Basically, you can visualise this by assuming that all characters are stored in computers using a special code, like the ciphers used in espionage. A character encoding provides a key to unlock ie. It is a set of mappings between the bytes in the computer and the characters in the character set. Without the key, the data looks like garbage. So, when you input text using a keyboard or in some other way, the character encoding maps characters you choose to specific bytes in computer memory, and then to display the text it reads the bytes back into characters.

Unfortunately, there are many different character sets and character encodings, ie. The section Additional information provides a little more detail for those who are interested.

Most of the time, however, you will not need to know the details. You will just need to be sure that you consider the advice in the section How does this affect me? A font is a collection of glyph definitions, ie. Once your browser or app has worked out what characters it is dealing with, it will then look in the font for glyphs it can use to display or print those characters.

Of course, if the encoding information was wrong, it will be looking up glyphs for the wrong characters. A Unicode-based encoding such as UTF-8 can support many languages and can accommodate pages and forms in any mixture of those languages. Of these three, only UTF-8 should be used for Web content. Decoding is the process of turning communication into thoughts. Encoded messages are sent through a channel, or a sensory route, on which a message travels to the receiver for decoding.

Much rarer is the use of music notation to encode messages for reasons of espionage or personal security called steganography. Because of the multitudinous ways in which notes and letters can be related, detecting hidden ciphers and proving accurate decipherment is difficult. If you need to better understand what characters and character encodings are, see the article Character encodings for beginners. If you really can't use a Unicode encoding, check that there is wide browser support for the page encoding that you have selected, and that the encoding is not on the list of encodings to be avoided according to recent specifications.

Developers also need to ensure that the various parts of the system can communicate with each other. Content authors should declare the character encoding of their pages using one of the methods described in Declaring character encodings in HTML. However, it is important to understand that just declaring an encoding inside a document or on the server won't actually change the bytes; you need to save the text in that encoding to apply it to your content.

The declaration just helps the browser interpret the sequences of bytes in which the text is stored. If necessary, set up UTF-8 as the default for new documents in your editor. The picture below shows how you would do that in the preferences of an editor such as Dreamweaver. You may also need to check that your server is serving documents with the right HTTP declarations, since it will otherwise override the in-document information see below.

Web pages must be able to communicate seamlessly with back-end scripts, databases, and such. These, of course, all work best with UTF-8, too. Developers can find a detailed set of things to consider in the article Migrating to Unicode. An HTML page can only be in one encoding. Make sure your Internet Information Service is running the local default Web site.

Your should see the French characters displayed correctly as shown below:. You should see "Western European" is selected. Easy to do, right?

We could make it even easier. French characters will still show up on the IE window. About This Book.