Character set encoding problem

[Erik Baluba]

Hi Øyvind,
...
> I have data in an Oracle 10gR2 database in ISO-8859-1 encoded columns
> (WE8ISO8859P1) and the names of my geometries appear correctly in a
> sqlplus search. But on the test mapserver PNG all characters beyond
> decimal 127 (such as æøå) come out as '?'.

What is the NLS_LANG setting on the oracle client computer running your 
webserver?  If it is a Norwegian or English Windows the codepage is WIN1252 
and your NLS_LANG would be something like Norwegian_Norway.WE8MSWIN1252. If 
so I see nothing wrong with your setup because character encodings for 'æøå' 
are the same in both ISO-8859-1 and WIN1252. Still, you can try to set the 
ENCODING to CP1252 in your mapping file to see if it helps.

  erik


> I have defined the encoding for the layer to 'ISO-8859-1'. That gives
> me the labels with '?' for the problem characters. If I write
> something wrong for the encoding, such as 'ISO-8859-', I get no labels
> at all, which is right according to the documentation. But if I enter
> a totally different encoding, such as 'EUC-JP', I get the same
> situation as with 'ISO-8859-1': Labels with '?' for the problem
> characters.
>
> Here is the layer from my mapfile:
>
> LAYER
>    NAME N250ADM
>    CONNECTIONTYPE oraclespatial
>    CONNECTION "username/pw at service"
>    DATA "GEOM FROM (select geom, navn from USD_KART_KARTV.KVN250_ADM_F) 
> USING SRID 82344"
>    STATUS on
>    TYPE polygon
>    MINSCALE 50001
>    LABELCACHE on
>    LABELITEM NAVN
>    CLASS
>     NAME "N 250 adm"
>     STYLE
>       COLOR 200 200 200
>       OUTLINECOLOR 0 0 0
>     END
>     LABEL
> ENCODING ISO-8859-1
> COLOR 0 0 0
> SIZE 10
>        TYPE truetype
>        FONT luximr
>     END
>    END
>  END
>
>
> I would be most grateful for any suggestion!
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Øyvind Eide
>