Foreign Character Sets

[Thiko]

Hi

Im very new to mysql - My experience of MySQL revealed some issues
with languages like Czech, Hungarian, Finnish and Polish. There was
also a question as to whether it could support Chinese.

We run version 4.0.15 of MySQL (the very latest production version is
4.0.16).

I would like to know:

1. Can it support Russian, Chinese (Reduced Character Set &
Traditional) and Spanish (not expecting a problem with Spanish)? What
standards have to be met, if any?

I saw from the official web site manual it does support these
languages. But trying to execute the command SHOW CHARACTER SET;
returns an error saying there is something wrong with the syntax.

http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Charset-charsets.html

2. If the current implementation cannot support Chinese and Russian,
are MySQL modules available to support these languages?

3. If modules are available, what would be the cost and timescales to
have them installed? Has anyone done something similar before? As
it's open source are there any costs? Also, what would the impact be
on the implementation to support English and Arabic i.e. can they
easily be installed, would there have to be a major retesting effort?

4. I would appreciate any other input ANYONE thinks would be useful.

Many Thanks.

Thiko!