Unicode in VOTable

[Dave Morris]

On 2014-08-14 17:35, Mark Taylor wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Aug 2014, Markus Demleitner wrote:
> 
>> Now, if we go this way: Why have a new type at all?  I'd maintain no
>> existing valid VOTable would break if we just said something 
>> essentially
>> like:
>> 
>>   VOTable considers char as byte streams that can be decoded from 
>> utf-8
>>   for presentation purposes.   TABLEDATA encoding is presentation.
>>   arraysize refers to the length of the bytestream always, never to
>>   the length of any unicode code sequence decodeable from the byte
>>   stream.
> 
> Yes, I think that would work.  "TABLEDATA encoding is presentation"
> seems like a rather radical statement in terms of the way one
> usually thinks about VOTable, but I can't think of any actual
> negative consequences.
> 

If I have a SQL database with a column defined as CHAR(3),

     CREATE TABLE my_table (
         xyz CHAR(3)
         );

How would I describe that as a FIELD ?

     <FIELD name='xyz' datatype='char' arraysize='3'>

     <FIELD name='xyz' datatype='char' arraysize='12'>

     <FIELD name='xyz' datatype='char' encoding='utf-8' arraysize='3'>

     <FIELD name='xyz' datatype='char' encoding='utf-8' arraysize='12'>


Thanks,
Dave

--------
Dave Morris
Software Developer
Wide Field Astronomy Unit
Institute for Astronomy
University of Edinburgh
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