This has just taken me a suprisingly long time to work out ...
I needed to output a file with the follwing as a marker in various places.
websites that work for you
Reading a unicode Excel file in PHP
It's easy to save an Excel file as CSV and read it in PHP with the fgetcsv function but this may not work so well if the file contains non-English characters.
Excel uses a non-standard character encoding for csv files.
You can save an Excel file as 'unicode' text however there are several unicode systems - Windows uses UTF-16, and PHP uses UTF-8.
To open the 'unicode text' file in PHP you have to convert it, in addition you may want to be able to open UTF-8 files that may be created by other systems.
Translating Drupal Websites
I've worked on a few internationalised sites in the past and it always raises challenges, Drupal makes some things easy - this post provides some simple tips for planning your translation process.
This advice is aimed at sizeable sites with formal release processes.
Project : Use Your Paths
An innovative project which saw thousands of people involved in updating a UK map
The whole site is fully bi-lingual (English/Welsh) with a Custom Content Management System enabling all text elements to be easily edited in either language.
The site uses a custom Map interface - this used satellite images at large scale conveying the feel of the green countryside, and detailed walking maps at the small scale.
