There are two general solutions to this, both involving _not_ translating before the characters get to your application. If you're writing in Java, you're set there, because Java tends to use Unicode. If you're using a Windows product, change all your routines from the A (ASCII) version to the W (wide) version. If you're in PL/1, change CHAR or CHARACTER to GRAPHIC. If you want to do the translation yourself, go ahead and do it in your program, and in your program, you can decide how to translate the characters. However, if you're acting internationally, the best bet is to change the back-end to have graphics. For instance, let's say I have this table in DB2: CREATE TABLE example( id INTEGER, code CHAR(2) NOT NULL, description VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY(id)); You can change the table quite easily to handle international symbols: CREATE TABLE example( id INTEGER, code GRAPHIC(2) NOT NULL, description VARGRAPHIC(30) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY(id)); You can do this using ALTER statements, without even having to move data around or create temp files. Here's where you want a Mac client. I can type in Unicode on my keyboard to just about any application, and certainly display unicode without having to worry about anything. I'm not sure how you do that part on the PC. --- Sheldon Linker Linker Systems, Inc. www.linkersystems.com sol@linker.com 800-315-1174 +1-949-552-1904

There are two general solutions to this, both involving _not_ translating before the characters get to your application. If you're writing in Java, you're set there, because Java tends to use Unicode. If you're using a Windows product, change all your routines from the A (ASCII) version to the W (wide) version. If you're in PL/1, change CHAR or CHARACTER to GRAPHIC. If you want to do the translation yourself, go ahead and do it in your program, and in your program, you can decide how to translate the characters. However, if you're acting internationally, the best bet is to change the back-end to have graphics. For instance, let's say I have this table in DB2: CREATE TABLE example( id INTEGER, code CHAR(2) NOT NULL, description VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY(id)); You can change the table quite easily to handle international symbols: CREATE TABLE example( id INTEGER, code GRAPHIC(2) NOT NULL, description VARGRAPHIC(30) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY(id)); You can do this using ALTER statements, without even having to move data around or create temp files. Here's where you want a Mac client. I can type in Unicode on my keyboard to just about any application, and certainly display unicode without having to worry about anything. I'm not sure how you do that part on the PC. --- Sheldon Linker Linker Systems, Inc. www.linkersystems.com sol@linker.com 800-315-1174 +1-949-552-1904