Thanks Gavin. Your advice was right on the mark. I've followed up on each of your points and so far it seems to be the solution I was looking for. What I'm planning to do at this stage is to tie all the text boxes and labels on each form and report to a series of DBF tables, and these tables will have separate records for each language. The downside for me is that my application is large, requiring many modifcations to the forms and reports. So this effort will take time to complete. I'll let you know how things turn out once I've gotten further into this task and begin testing it in the field (Japan).

Thanks again for your pointers.

- David Lauben

>Hi David,
>
>I've had experience with developing multilingual Apps using Asian Character Set. Unfortunately most of my knowledge has been gained by stumbling around in the dark <s>.
>
>Yes, you can store Japanese in FoxPro DBFs ( I've done it successfully ), using what's called DBCS ( Double Byte Character Set ) which stores a character in 2 bytes instead of 1.
>
>Take a look at 'Chapter 18: Developing International Applications' in the online help (VFP6.0) for further information.
>
>You'll either need to have a Japanese Version of Windows or Use Windows 2000 and have Japanese as your default 'Language Settings for the System' in the Regional Options in the Control Panel.
>
>I developed a multilingual App which required housing of data in Korean, Japanese, Chinese & Roman Character sets, but unfortunately my experience with VFP was that it could only house one type of Asian Characters set + Roman Character Sets. I ended up writing my App in Access 2000 because it could store more than 2 character sets in the one table.
>
>If you're only going to be housing Japanese & Roman Character sets in the tables then you'll be fine with VFP. You'll want to use a Font capable of displaying Japanese Characters. I use 'Arial Unicode MS' which supports a wide array of character sets, but I believe that there are also Japanese specific fonts available.
>
>You'll probably also need what's called a Japanese IME ( Input Method Editor ) which allows you to enter Japanese characters using a standard keyboard. You can get the IME by purchasing Microsoft Office 2000 Proofing Tools or by purchasing a product called www.njstar.com which also has an excellent IME. I used NJSTAR for my last App written in Chinese/Roman Characters and it worked superbly. I believe that Win2K has inbuilt IMEs.
>
>You might also want to have a look at www.unicode.org which has a wealth of information on different character sets.
>
>Please let me know how your App comes along. I'm very interested in this type of application as I plan to do more in the future and am still not sure of the best way to achieve them. Please Feel free to Email me about the Subject.
>
>
>Hope this helps and Good Luck,
>Gavin...
>
>>Hello All,
>>
>>Can any tell me if there is any way to enable Japanese characters (Kanji) to be stored in the FoxPro DBF tables? If not, is there a way to have Kanji displayed in text fields or labels of forms and reports? I'm looking into enabling my application to display information in either English or Japanese (or any other language as needed in the future). I'm hoping to hear from someone who has actually accomplished this task (or tried and failed due to some definate limitation). Thanks.