[postgis-users] shp2pgsql encoding problem - Thai Language

[Paul Hastings]

Ben Madin wrote:
> can tell, the encoding is ISO-8559-11 (not an official encoding, but  
> similar to other latin/non-latin encodings)

iso-8859-11 *is* an "official" encoding but depending on where you got the data, 
it's more likely to be windows-874 or TIS-620 codepages. or could even be mac 
thai (though not likely, nobody i know *here* uses a mac for any GIS work but 
you never know). i can't actually recall there being any difference between 
these codepages but MS sure likes to do supersets, so better double check.

> Is this a hopeless case - do I need to (can I?) edit the .dbf file to  
> remove the columns with the Thai encoding and then type them all back  
> in!? Is there another way?

i normally pull out non-unicode text into a file, convert that to utf-8, import 
& update the real data. i also recall qgis being able to handle this too.

just for thai:
http://www.lyndonhill.com/Projects/thaiconv.html

or better yet:
http://www.melody-soft.com/html/unifier.html
best $20 you'll ever spend...