[mythtv-users] UTF-8 Support in MythTV still looks messed up to me

[Dave M G]

MythTV Users,

A long time back, I had trouble getting Japanese characters to display 
on MythTV. So, after asking around on this list and the developers list, 
I found I had to make alterations to the database to get UTF-8 support 
to work.

I wrote my instructions into the MythTV Wiki:

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Utf8_Text_in_OSD

I've just completely reinstalled MythTV, and went back to the same 
instructions I wrote on the MythTV wiki. Turns out, someone wrote in a 
warning saying that the instructions are completely wrong and should no 
longer be used.

Fine, I guess, so long as MythTV is actually doing a better job of UTF-8 
now. A little more looking around on the net and it seems that the 
database is supposed to be in UTF-8 and "just work".

However, near as I can tell, the database still encodes information in 
"latin_swedish_ci", and converts all my Japanese text into ASCII 
gibberish when trying to use mythfilldatabase.

On this thread, it says something vague about using some fromutf8() 
command when moving strings to and from the database, but no 
instructions on where to apply the command or how it relates to 
mythfilldatabase, or, well, anything:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/344332

So... I'm willing to believe the "ugly hack" I wrote to get Japanese 
characters before is no longer the way to do things.

But I don't see what is the proper way to do things now. My Japanese 
characters are not working with the default setup.

Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks.

(PS: Oh, and the fonts that ship with MythTV don't support Japanese 
characters fully, so that does need to be changed)

-- 
Dave M G