La Vita è Bella

First of all, I must say MySQL sucks!

As from MySQL 4.1, if the database default charset is UTF8 but the default charset setting in my.cnf is not UTF8, you must do a "SET NAMES UTF8" query after connection, to make sure that in this mysql connection, all query will be handled as UTF8. otherwise seems that it will use latin1 as default.

If the "SET NAMES" isn't queried, the articles and comments won't be malformed, but the data that stored in MySQL database isn't actually in UTF8 encoding, so that for example mysqldump, or phpmyadmin, won't get the right data.

So what we need to do is check database's charset setting, and send a "SET NAME" query to ensure we're using the database's charset setting.

I've found that LifeType did this thing, so I copied its detecting code and made patches for NucleusCMS and Wikka Wiki (and also my custom homepage for LifeType, of course!).

But before downloading the patches, I should tell you that:

First, you MUST convert your database. Cause before you patch NucleusCMS or Wikka Wiki, your articles, comments, etc. that already posted, was stored in the old way in the db.

To do that, follow the following steps (this is in case the my.cnf indicate "latin1" but your database was in "utf8", if you're using other charsets, modify them):

1. mysqldump -h host -u username -ppassword database --default-character-set=latin1 > dump.sql
2. Edit dump.sql, on Line 10, replace "latin1" with "utf8"
3. mysql -h host -u username -ppassword database < dump.sql

Second, you must ensure that in your database, ALL charset settings are set to "utf8". The word "ALL" means databases, tables and fields.

Finally, here're the patches: for nucleus, for wikka, released under GPL. WARNING: Use it on your own risk, and make backup before patching.

tags: wikka, wiki, nucleus, blog, utf8, mysql, patch, charset, use, names

Gecko based browsers, including Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Camino, Mozilla Seamonkey, optimized 3rd-party builds of Firefox and etc. , didn't display buttons on webpages well on Mac OS X.

For aqua buttons, that shown in Camino and some optimized 3rd-party builds of Firefox, the CJK buttons often be malformed and cause you can't see the text on the button well. For common buttons, they're just ugly.

I've found a hack through the internet, and I'm not so sure what did it actually do (seems to be some dirty tricks), but it works. So I cut off some unnecessary codes and made this patch. To use it, just execute the following command under terminal (Terminal.app or iTerm.app, replace "/Applications/Camino.app" to the path of the app you want to patch):

cd /Applications/Camino.app/Contents/MacOS/res/
patch -i /path/to/moz-forms.patch

And it's done.

Before:

After:

I didn't write this patch. I just found it and made it easier to use.

tags: mac, osx, patch, cjk, button, gecko, firefox, camino, seamonkey