I've been bitten by this as well but EDI, especially EDIFACT, is international and needs to be able to handle all kinds of characters, including double-byte, especially in text message fields. It's not so much the transactions themselves because they are ASCII files and extended characters are extended ASCII characters, even if they are double byte and I know from personal experience loading Mandarin characters into SAP in Taiwan through double-byte ASCII files that this stuff is supported by ASCII. ASCII is an ANSI format that includes many, many character sets for a very large number of common and exotic languages. And there are other character sets out there as well that can be supported by a mapper and that EDI, especially EDIFACT, needs to be able to support. The issue is really mapping. And while I can't speak for every mapping program, I know that Contivo and the GIS mapper do have data types for field definition that will accept extended characters. The GIS mapper, for example, has a Free Format String data type that will accept anything. And SAP certainly supports posting a wide variety of extended and double-byte character sets. So the short answer is yes, EDI does support inclusion of French accents, a piece of cake next to Turkish or Vietnamese or Hebrew or Mandarin or my own personal favorite Greek. It's still all just ASCII. _____
From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John Fiorino Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 10:47 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [EDI-L] Illegal characters in EDI Hello group, I need to put this to bed once and for all: are extended set characters such as French accents acceptable (re: allowed, permitted) in EDI transactions or not?? Are they acceptable within the 'standards'? I have worked with half a dozen or so EDI translators and have always had trouble in accepting these characters. For the most part they cannot process these characters and will return 'bad EDI' error. As a rule, I've always insisted that my partners avoid sending these characters within a transactions, namely in product descriptions or address lines and I've also ensured that I don't send any out either. Many ERP's can't handle these accents either. Not sending any simply keeps thing simple on both ends. So are they allowed or not? Thanks. John Fiorino EDI Integration Specialist CompuSys Solutions (450)669-5506 Mobile: (514)592-7144 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ ... Please use the following Message Identifiers as your subject prefix: <SALES>, <JOBS>, <LIST>, <TECH>, <MISC>, <EVENT>, <OFF-TOPIC> Job postings are welcome, but for job postings or requests for work: <JOBS> IS REQUIRED in the subject line as a prefix.Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
